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.
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.
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.
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.
Of course, with all this data, security and traceability come to mind. Listen to what Cedric has to say.
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.
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.
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.
Patrick also talks about what's next for train operators. The key word is integrated.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
