Electronics development and manufacturing are plagued by supply chain issues—Siemens might have an answer.
This month, Siemens has announced that it will be integrating the Supplyframe Design-to-Source Intelligence platform into the Siemens Xcelerator portfolio. The news comes two years after acquiring Supplyframe. The aim of the integration is to add real-time supply chain information and intelligence systems into Siemens’ digital twin technologies. Supplyframe offers engineers real-time availability and lead times for over 600 million components and collects billions of data signals on supply, demand, risk and commercial intent.
“Global supply chains have become increasingly unpredictable due to unprecedented geopolitical developments, globally distributed organizations and suppliers, and ever-growing pressure to develop highly complex new products and bring them to market quickly,” said AJ Incorvaia, senior vice president of Electronic Board Systems at Siemens Digital Industries Software in a release. “By leveraging the industry leading capabilities of Supplyframe’s Design-to-Source Intelligence platform together with Siemens’ industry-leading Xpedition software for electronic systems design, we are equipping our customers with the tools and technologies to compete and thrive in the face of these challenges.”
Siemens Xpedition software is known for its electronic systems design functionality, making it an ideal tool to first be integrated with Supplyframe. During the ongoing supply chain shortages created by COVID-19, global unrest and shipping delays affecting electronics and PCBs have been some of the biggest hit items. With this integration, engineers will be able to make their electronic systems more resilient during the design process, and when it comes to supply chain issues that can affect availability, demand, cost, compliance and other issues. Effectively, this process would unify and streamline the ECAD, PLM and supply chain workflows to better select parts, take advantage of market opportunities, create designs and manage components while reducing supply chain risks.
“To remain competitive in today’s dynamic global business landscape, organizations must be able to quickly adapt their design and sourcing strategies to keep pace with the rapid evolution of the industry,” said Steve Flagg, founder and CEO of Supplyframe, a Siemens business. “The addition of this offering extends Siemens’ supply chain resilience leadership. The Siemens Xcelerator portfolio enables robust collaboration across engineering, NPI management and sourcing teams, while providing built-in resilience and decision support for all stakeholders within the modern digital enterprise.”
This news comes after Siemens gained top scores in manufacturing execution systems (MES) and PLM from Gartner and Forrester, respectively. This addition of SupplyFrame into its workflows represents an added functionality to the “do everything” mentality of the current engineering software market. As consolidation continues, and more bridges are created to connect to third party engineering software tools, engineers and corporations will be able to truly link all their data and systems into a single source of truth—optimizing everything from design, sales, manufacturing, maintenance and more. This move from Siemens is just another step to this connected future.
