Corporate Profile: Siemens Iindustry, Inc.

An overview of the company and its organization, products, services and capabilities.

ADVANCED CNC . . . NOT A LUXURY, IT’S A NECESSITY
Until perhaps ten years ago, the short list of “musts” for your machine control would have comprised the basics of axis motion, table motion, spindle control and tool change. Today, as parts have become more complex and cost pressures increase, the method by which those part designs are fed to the machine has changed and more is required of your shop in the areas of cost containment and performance validation. This is especially true if you make parts for automotive, appliance, aerospace, military or medical markets.

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For controls suppliers, it’s become a matter of keeping pace with both motion control and process control, in order to help our machine builder customers and ultimately the end user shops of all sizes better accommodate their growing challenges. How we accomplish these tasks will set the stage for our future.

Once, the job shop and contract manufacturer markets could prosper with a core of good customers and a steady flow of work. Then the trend went to more outsourcing and cost justification. Then, the demand for value-added services emerged and, today, those requirements are further complicated by new competition, a decline in the available labor pool and further cost reductions. Thus the challenge for the shops that seek to survive and prosper into the next generation is to raise the bar on their own performance, through several strategies.

It’s here that the controls supplier can be an invaluable asset to a shop’s operation. When the machine can do more, the shop can do more, simply stated. Improvements in automation, coupled with a faster time-to-first-part, the ability to run more small batch jobs and squeeze more profit from the larger production runs, will result in more opportunities for a shop, regardless of size. It’s possible to have a three-man shop, where two of the three have G-code experience and can maximize the production of their five-axis machines, as well as a 40-man shop that becomes and remains a Tier One vendor to automotive, because we have such companies as customers of our customers.