Siemens and Telefónica have signed an agreement to jointly promote the digitalisation and automation of industry in Spain. The two companies will collaborate to facilitate advanced connectivity through IoT and 5G architectures. They will also promote the use of digital solutions based on enabling technologies, such as digital twins and artificial intelligence (AI), in operations and production processes being used by factories to drive their digital transformation.

The German company's participation in the agreement will consist of offering its most innovative industrial technologies in order to make industry's new production models, which rely heavily on capturing, interpreting and using data, as efficient as possible. Telefónica will provide its state-of-the-art network infrastructure.

Moving towards digital transformation
By implementing this agreement, Siemens and Telefónica will be able to integrate the most innovative benchmark technologies in industry, with the aim of supporting their customers on the road to digital transformation. To optimise their results, specialised professionals from Telefónica Spain and Geprom (a Telefónica Tech company specialising in industrial automation engineering and digital transformation) will have access to Siemens certification and training courses in automation and digitalisation.

The partnership’s main objective is to optimise integration between industrial factory networks (OT) and business environments (IT) by using  technology developed by Siemens, and by the implementation of production management systems through its Opcenter platform. This will enable efficient coordination and operation of industrial assets and processes, as well as allowing for new AI and data management models to be incorporated into the OT domain.

Digitalised environments
The two companies plan to create digitalised environments in which their customers can experience this access to digital transformation. The telecommunications company will in particular make its Innovation and Talent Hub at LaCabina, located in the Telefónica District, available for this project, while Siemens will showcase the technologies available at its Digital Experience Center in Madrid and Barcelona and at the Shipbuilding Industry Centre of Excellence (Cesena) in Ferrol.

Under the agreement, the two companies will also jointly develop professional services that incorporate the best solutions and practices in digitalisation projects for industrial companies. They will also contribute to developing new use cases in Spain. The details of this agreement were made public at the seventh National Industry Congress, held in Barcelona on 15 and 16 January. Siemens and Telefónica demonstrated how these technologies can be used to ensure that Spanish industry achieves digital transformation, with a real-time demonstration applied to the automotive sector.

^{Photo: Siemens}