Against the backdrop of the Hannover Messe, Hiroyuki Aota, Director in charge of Factory Solutions Business and Executive Officer of Panasonic Corporation, and Anton S. Huber, CEO of the Digital Factory Division at Siemens AG, signed a Memorandum of Understanding setting out the intention of the two companies to work more closely together in the future in the fields of automation concepts for the electronics industry.

The focus lies on standardized line integration concepts, which the partners plan to develop not only for individual production lines but also as overarching integration concepts for all process steps at the factory level, and as company-wide automation standards for globally distributed production networks.

Over recent years, Panasonic and Siemens have both worked independently on pioneering concepts linking digitalization and automation. In essence, the Smart Factory offering from Panasonic encompasses automatic assembly systems and the Manufacturing Execution System application PanaCIM.

With the Digital Enterprise, Siemens is bringing to the table a portfolio encompassing the core elements of industrial software and automation, industrial communication, security and services. The contribution Siemens aims to make to the jointly developed concepts will be first and foremost its expertise in control and automation technology.

At the signing of the Memorandum of Understanding, Hiroyuki Aota said: “To significantly improve the productivity and quality of electronic equipment assembly, it is vital to connect all the equipment of any vendor in order to control the entire factory floor in real time. So concluding the memorandum for collaboration with Siemens, a company which has excellent technologies based on control devices and optimization software, will enable us to enhance our smart factory at the global level.”

Anton S. Huber added: “Electronic production offers enormous potential for digitalization. The use of integrated automation solutions paves the way for substantial increases in both productivity and quality. Cooperation with Panasonic offers an exciting opportunity to selectively advance our Digital Enterprise portfolio for companies in the electronics industry.”