Member of the Managing Board (CEO Digital Industries), Siemens
Siemens Xcelerator – Going digital in industry, mobility, and energy distribution
Are you already tapping into digital technologies to transform the way you compete, collaborate, and connect? At the launch of ...
About Cedrik Neike
Cedrik Neike, Member of the Managing Board and CEO of Digital Industries at Siemens, participated in a panel discussion on April 1, 2026, with leaders from Pringles to discuss digital transformation in the consumer packaged goods (CPG) industry. Neike described CPG as a large, largely unconsolidated industry worth between 2.5 and 3 trillion dollars, and said it carries "enormous responsibility" because many people depend on it. He stated that "great taste does not need to produce great waste" and advocated for collaboration to produce goods "faster, better, more efficiently, and more sustainably." During the discussion, Neike outlined Siemens' approach to building the "Industrial Metaverse" use case by use case, describing a cycle of collecting machine data, using AI to interpret it, sharing learnings with R&D and manufacturing, and acting on those insights to change formulations and improve machines. He said the objective is to create an "infinite cycle of learning and innovation" and noted that the challenge is how quickly that cycle can be established and strengthened with future use cases.
Transcript (33 segments)
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Alex Chavez0:01
Thank you for tuning in to Talking Digital Industries, the podcast for technologies and trends that drive industrial enterprises. My name is Alex Chavez. In this episode, you can listen in on a conversation that took place at the launch of Siemens' Accelerator, the open digital business platform that will accelerate digital transformation. You'll hear from Cedric Neike, CEO of Digital Industry at Siemens; Laura Matz, Chief Science and Technology Officer at Merck; Patrick Fware, CEO of Govia Thameslink Railway; and Tron Skeleer, CEO of Elvia. Let's get started. Here's Cedric as he welcomes his guests and sets the stage for their conversation.
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Cedrik Neike1:02
So, it's absolutely wonderful to have you today. We want to make things real, and there's nothing more real than customers who have made things. The reason we're doing Accelerator is because of you. You're in very different industries and you want to push the envelope. We were looking for wow factors, and there are three different wow factors in your industries. Looking at Merck, 350 years old, twice as old as Siemens, still one of the most innovative companies, thanks to the CTO who brings cutting-edge technology and pharmaceutical capabilities. We also have our friends from GTR, who push the envelope. Industry 1.0 was driven by trains, and even Industry 4.0 and the next generation are driven by trains. We need to understand what we can learn from each other. And Tron, if you go to Norway, you'll probably buy an electric car and use Tron's grid. Tron makes sure renewables get integrated into the grid and that the whole grid is operated out of the cloud. I'm super excited to learn from you and to see how we can drive this together. Thank you for being here.
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Laura Matz2:19
Thank you.
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Patrick Fware2:20
Pleasure.
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Alex Chavez2:20
Thank you. We're going to hear now about some of the big challenges facing Cedric's guests. The last years have been intense for pharma, and if you guessed COVID-19 is the reason, you're right. Here's Laura Matz, Chief Science and Technology Officer at Merck.
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Laura Matz2:35
Over the past two years with COVID and the vaccines being introduced in record time, this has transformed the mindset of the pharmaceutical and biotechnology industry. Data is ever more important. Regulatory bodies are changing their approach, asking for more data in real time and looking for new ways to treat data in clinical trials and approvals. This is a critical capability for Merck. We need traceability and transparency of data, from raw materials through manufacturing to finished goods in patients' hands. This is key to the trust we gain from partners and patients. In 2021, we introduced a partnership with Siemens to bring digital tracking technology for data. Another big change is new therapies, like mRNA and cell therapy. This means we have to treat data carefully and bring complex datasets together. In a clinical trial, you have patient behavior, genetic makeup, and therapy effectiveness. This creates a digital twin of the patient, leading to personalized medicine. Interoperability is a key challenge.
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Alex Chavez5:00
Of course, with all this data, security and traceability come to mind. Listen to what Cedric has to say.
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Cedrik Neike5:07
If I look at Merck, if I have a digital twin of myself, I want to be 100% sure that I trust you and that it's traceable. That's why we need to work across the value chain to ensure data is true and secure. If I get a vaccine, it better work. We're working with Merck, with machines sending data through the process so we can understand what's in there. When you take a bottle, you see components, but you also want to know where it comes from, its carbon footprint, if child labor was used. That's why this collaboration is important. Once we solve it, it will be useful for other industries, like BMW tracing its supply chain. Thank you for innovating. Let's replicate this. That's why we work with Merck.
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Alex Chavez6:13
The fact that solutions can be extended from one industry to another is a special feature of Siemens Accelerator, and Cedric will say more about that later. Right now, we'll hear about other challenges facing Cedric's guests. This is Patrick Fware on the challenges in the railway industry: growing traffic volumes and legacy infrastructure. You'll remember Patrick is the CEO of Govia Thameslink Railway, also known as GTR. The company is part of the British railway system and includes the Southern, Thameslink, Great Northern, and Gatwick Express routes in London and the Southeast since 1996.
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Patrick Fware7:01
Passenger demand had more than doubled, from 500 million to over a billion, all done on Victorian infrastructure with traditional trains. We were running out of capacity. The only solution was to add capacity with something completely transformational and new. The problem: you can't just stop a billion passengers from traveling for a couple of years while redesigning the railway. It was like open-heart surgery while the patient is conscious. We designed a fully integrated system with intelligent stations and infrastructure that communicates, and the trains brought what's called Rail Engineering, a digital asset management system. This has given us great benefits for train operations, both for passenger experience and cost control. We collect 4 billion data points on our fleet every year and use that with Siemens to generate predictive maintenance, fixing components before they fail while the train is out of operation, not while it's carrying 1,500 passengers. Combined with automated train operation, trains can run driverless, boosting availability to almost 100%. That's where passengers benefit.
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Alex Chavez9:01
Patrick also talks about what's next for train operators. The key word is integrated.
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Patrick Fware9:07
Leadership in the rail industry in technology is quite good, but it's not particularly integrated. The next step is to link infrastructure, track to trains, connect it to timetabling systems, and make it really clever. All of us take trains and hate when they are late. Living in London, you've done a huge impact on availability. I'm good friends with the CEO of Siemens Mobility, a super geek on trains. He tells me they have the technology, but hearing it from you makes it real. The availability you stress-tested with 250 million people who all want to be on time. You not only collect 4 billion data points, you analyze them with AI and machine learning to predict the future. Most people don't know, but the thing that makes a train late is often a broken door. So you need to see before the door fails.
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Cedrik Neike10:35
The cool thing about working with Patrick is we encapsulated this technology. We can make it replicable. Wouldn't you like it, Laura, that your machines work and you predict before they fail? Wouldn't you like to schedule for hundreds of millions of users exactly when load would come on board in terms of renewables? Patrick, you've been a front-runner not only to make life around London better, but you could use technology we could replicate. And yes, I am a huge train enthusiast, not as much as Uber, but nearly there.
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Alex Chavez11:12
Now, you're going to hear from Tron Skeleer, CEO of Elvia, one of Norway's largest electricity network companies. Tron talks about how Norway's love of green power and electric cars is putting the grid to the test.
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Tron Skeleer11:29
Norway has always had green power generation, hydropower, and with very attractive incentives, electric vehicles have been very popular for many years. We are planning to have 100% EVs by 2025. We have had three decades with stable production and supply of energy, but only in the last years has demand grown rapidly. New distributed energy resources like wind and solar, and new demand and behavior, create new challenges in the grid. That's why we are working with Siemens to solve these challenges and find solutions that are good for the environment and meet customer expectations.
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Alex Chavez12:46
In case you're wondering what behavior and grid changes Tron is talking about, it has to do with everyone doing the same thing at the same time. When people come home from work, they plug in electric vehicles at the same time. Ten to twenty years ago, we used electricity in different ways. Now we do exactly the same at exactly the same time. Also, with solar panels on roofs, the sun shines on all houses at the same time.
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Tron Skeleer13:28
All of them at the same time. Exactly the same time.
And how do you prepare the grid to cope with such rapid changes? Our perspective is that we have taken digital transformation at a more radical level than most companies. We are changing the complete infrastructure in a period of 3 years, a massive technical and organizational project.
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Alex Chavez14:05
Well, Tron is very humble. He took the number one and number three grid operators in Norway together, combined them, and said, 'I'm going to use a completely new digital infrastructure.' Whoever follows me can play with me, and whoever doesn't is out. We at Siemens have been doing this for a long time. Tron asked if we could move him to renewables, handle the sun shining 24 hours in summer and nearly zero in winter, and do it on the cloud. We built microservices on Kubernetes to make it flexible. That's why you're here. Why is it important? Because each of you has promised to be carbon neutral by 2020, 2030, 2040. You can only do that using Tron's technology. You need to combine the grid operator with your companies and train infrastructure to start communicating.
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Tron Skeleer15:11
So, we are making these capabilities available to everyone using Siemens Accelerator capabilities. That's why thank you for human change culture, but also technology change culture that helps us take this technology across many requests.
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Alex Chavez15:31
As Cedric points out, success depends on cultural change on a human level as well as on a technological level. That's something Laura underlines.
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Laura Matz15:37
We look at it from two perspectives. One is the technology, and the partnership with Siemens has been fantastic in enabling us to advance. The second part is the people. We can't put all this technology into the plant and say, 'Now go make it happen.' We need to upskill our people so they understand the capability and the power in front of them. The combination of technology and people coming together is where you truly get advancements. For Merck, as a science and technology company, this is critical because then we can gain new insights into our products and collaborate with our customers.
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Alex Chavez16:36
A big topic here is change, which people aren't always excited about. Cedric puts it well.
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Cedrik Neike16:45
Everybody loves change as long as it happens to somebody else. Laura, Patrick, and Tron give some insights on change in their organizations as a result of their digital transformations.
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Laura Matz17:01
It's definitely a journey. The first level is that there are a lot of buzzwords. Demystifying the buzzwords makes people start to understand what we're talking about and how they can use it to make their jobs easier. That's where momentum starts. But it's a mindset shift. To get the benefit, you have to change your business processes to truly transform.
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Patrick Fware17:29
Once people start seeing the benefits and the success, it becomes easier. I spoke about our train drivers earlier. They were very reluctant, thinking they would lose their jobs. But we said no, we still need you to ensure safety. Once they saw the reality and the whole thing coming to life, they became very proud. The most important thing is not to shy away from it and to accept people's reluctance and hesitance. Look for common aspects to bring them on board.
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Tron Skeleer18:11
Buy-in from the people is necessary for the success of the project. To get buy-in, you have to involve them. You can't just present the new workday or system. You have to involve them during the projects. People are the key. They are not losing their jobs, but they have to be prepared to work in a different way. Done right, that can be very motivating.
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Alex Chavez19:00
The conversation then moved to ecosystems. Laura started with ecosystems around the creation of drugs and other areas in pharma.
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Laura Matz19:10
I talked about the learnings from COVID, which has resonated within the healthcare industry. Traditionally, developing a drug takes 7 to 10 years. Now, multiple companies come together for pre-competitive work. There are ecosystems around early drug discovery and around bringing patient data together, like with MD Anderson, aggregating data so academic researchers can gain new insights. A key thing is that patient data is incredibly sensitive. We must advance science while ensuring data is tightly secured. That's where the crypto anchor we're working on with Siemens can give trust that data is handled safely.
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Patrick Fware20:22
In rail, the focus should be on integrating everything. We need to look at all systems, not just Thameslink. They are all in isolated form collecting data but not linked up. We need to bring them into a system where we integrate everything and make it predictive for the benefit of passengers. We're not doing that right now.
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Alex Chavez20:53
Cedric wraps up the discussion talking about Siemens Accelerator, the new open digital business platform which promises to make digital transformations like those at Merck, GTR, and Elvia even easier.
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Cedrik Neike21:10
To look at the future, you need to look at the past. For 175 years, we have been your partner. Siemens discovered the dynamo-electric principle that enabled grid providers. We came up with the first electric train. We enabled the chemical industry. We deeply understand each industry. But what we dream of is to take operational technology and combine it with the ease, capability, and flexibility that the world loves. With Accelerator, we want to be open so you are not locked in, make it easy to take one solution and put it with another, and integrate. It's plug-and-run, not plug-and-play. We take software capabilities and enable complete industries. The idea is that Tron, you would run your grid as code, as a software environment. Patrick, you would run your rail network as a software environment. Laura, you would run your manufacturing process that way. That's why we launched Accelerator. The idea is to take software capabilities and replicate them across industries so you can learn from each other. If we do this, as Doug said beautifully, the sky is not the limit. What if every time I plug into Tron's grid, it's only green energy, CO2 neutral or even negative? What if there's no more rush hour because trains are so great? What if you come up with the next cure for cancer and we can scale it? We have this unique opportunity. We must change ourselves to become more collaborative, more open, with standard APIs. Each of you is on a mission to change the world. If we can help by making our capabilities available, that would be fantastic. That is the vision we have.
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Alex Chavez23:45
I hope you enjoyed this episode of Talking Digital Industries. If you want to know more about Siemens Accelerator, check out www.siemens.com/accelerator. Thank you for listening and join us again soon.