German firm Continental’s tyre division and Siemens have tied up whereby Siemens will supply automation and drive technology for Continental’s tyre factories worldwide. The aim of the cooperation is to further optimise Continental’s global tyre production with control and automation technology. As part of the agreement, standards will be established which will help Continental make its production machinery more efficient throughout their lifecycles, say the firms.
To drive standardisation, Continental says it will purchase its automation systems and large parts of its drive technology for new machines and developments from Siemens. The supplier will equip Continental tyre factories with Simatic controllers, I/O systems, WinCC Unified operator control units, and industrial PCs. Siemens will also train the relevant employees at Continental tyre factories in TIA portal.
The high degree of standardisation will be further developed, especially where software is concerned. The Siemens Tire Library, a software library for standardising the control of sensors and actuators, will also provide support on this matter. This will simplify mechanical engineering as well as maintenance for machines and equipment for Continental and its machine suppliers as well. Standardisation also enables the machines to operate uniformly, regardless of machine supplier.
In addition, the use of these digital technologies promotes sustainable production, a key concern in the tyre industry. In this regard, Siemens offers particularly long lifecycles for the hardware products to be used in the future and enables software and hardware innovations to be easily integrated throughout the machines’ lifecycles. Siemens also provides technical support and is working on long-term availability of spare parts.
Siemens and Continental Tires have worked together in the past around digitalisation. One example is the digital twin of an extrusion plant, which is used, among other things, for virtual commissioning. Continental Tires also uses Siemens edge technology and cloud hosting for Mendix applications.