Today, the global industrial landscape is in full transformation, while giving companies unusual latitude to influence future industry structure. The industrial renewal can only be possible if industries are prepared to unleash global opportunities for value creation through digitalization, advances in automation, big data and the Internet of Things. From supply chains to customer experience, digitalization is changing the way industry functions, particularly in processing and manufacturing sectors, yet enormous untapped potential remains.
The key enabler for harnessing the benefits of digitalization is a lifecycle plant management from engineering to operations. With COMOS software, Siemens can carry out integrated plant asset management projects over the entire industrial lifecycle. Whereas, the open cloud-based Internet of Things platform – MindSphere - connects machines and physical infrastructure to the digital world and provides powerful industrial apps and digital services.
The companies in the forest industry (including pulp & paper) are facing a dramatic upheaval. The demand for traditional paper – for example, for newspapers or office use – is declining about five percent annually worldwide, while the demand for fiber products continues to grow. What’s needed is methods and process innovations by which new materials could be produced from wood fibers.
What are we looking for?
With the aim to build a cross-industrial innovation ecosystem of technology companies, solution providers, engineering and consulting companies, as well as end customers and OEMs, the Digital Fiber Initiative is looking for solutions that increase productivity in the forest industry throughout the value chain from engineering to business operations within the New Digital business from data and New wood fiber process innovations.
Companies of all sizes with a capability to address these categories are invited to join the Digital Fiber Initiative and become a part of an innovative ecosystem, paving the way for new forest industry solutions. The proposals can be related to but not limited to for example:
- Back-end data gathering infrastructure such as sensors and actuators
- Connectivity and data aggregation, measurement, control and upfront processing
- Front-end data analytics, uptime optimization, real-time informatics, predictive maintenance
- Enabled virtual concepts leveraging the capabilities of existing digital infrastructures
- New wood fiber process innovations for end customers, e.g. cellulose fiber wet-spinning
- New business or service concepts
- Industrial apps or digital services
Siemens invites partners to build an open innovation ecosystem for forest industry digitalization. With the aim to achieve the next level of industrial productivity, partners are encouraged to utilize Siemens’ Digital Enterprise platform solutions and VTT’s Bioruukki Pilot Centre to innovate across the entire forest industry value chain. Siemens’ Digital Enterprise platform solutions include MindSphere, an open cloud-based IoT platform and COMOS, Siemens’ plant engineering software.
The Digital Fiber ecosystem consists now of 11 partners: Blend Media, Collective Crunch, Hitseed, Infinited Fiber Company, Lappeenrannan Teknillinen Yliopisto (LUT), Process Genius, Prometec, Semantum and Sofecta.
To find out more about the ecosystem, partners and Siemens' solutions, go to Siemens Digital Fiber ecosystem pages (in Finnish).
The Digital Fiber Initiative is jointly organized by Siemens and Spinverse
Industrial Internet has become an essential part of innovation in process industries, but utilization of digital twins across the whole process life cycle has been lagging. The Digital Fiber Ecosystem, initiated by Siemens and other key players in process automation and digitalization, is changing this landscape in the bioprocess industry.
In this Innovation Challenge, we are looking for new opportunities to gain significant competitiveness improvements in the bio-based industry based on digital twins.
Has your company or organization identified a challenging problem that could be solved utilizing digital twins? What value could digital twins bring in the bio-based industry? Which business models are needed to capitalize their benefits?
Digital Fiber Initiative welcomes companies and teams to join this Innovation Challenge. The Challenge participants can come from any organizations dealing with process industry digitalization, including process plants, engineering, consulting and systems integration service providers as well as research organizations and academia. Joint teams representing different backgrounds are also welcome.
