Volkmar Sterzing and his team are developing a learning process that searches for efficient, ecofriendly and economical operating methods modeled on nature. The process can be applied to everything from home appliances to power turbines.

Maximilian Fleischer is working on electronic gas sensors that detect air and water pollutants at an early stage. Energy-efficient regulation of building systems, early fire detection and the diagnosis of respiratory diseases are just a few of the sensors’ possible applications.

Ute Liepold is developing luminescent substances for efficient LEDs with low energy consumption and longer lifetimes. The search for such substances is being rapidly accelerated by the methods of combinatory chemistry. A single so-called “luminescent library” can contain up to 96 different substance combinations.

Our innovations are shaping the future of industrial production. With the acquisition of UGS, we’re now in a position to directly link – for the first time – ­virtual product and production design with the real world of industrial automation. Implementing our intelligent factory concept, developers around the world will cooperate with customers, partners and suppliers in real time to simulate entire manufacturing processes down to the last detail before real-life production begins. The result: faster development and time-to-market, substantial cost savings and a virtually limitless degree of production flexibility that will enable our customers to tailor their offerings even more closely to their customers’ individual specifications. Products that have been completely manufactured, tested and assembled in the virtual environment prior to real-world production include aircraft, high-speed trains and the latest gas turbines.

The second question concerns energy and the environment. We invest some €2 billion a year in the ­development of ecofriendly technologies and hold roughly 30,000 patents – nearly half of all the inventions in our patent portfolio – in the environmental field. At the same time, we offer products, systems and services for virtually every aspect of power generation, transmission and utilization – in energy-efficient power plants, buildings, lighting devices, home appliances, transportation systems and industrial applications. Our solutions include everything from virtual power plant networks, energy-saving motors and the world’s largest and most efficient gas turbine to extremely reliable wind power systems and the brightest, whitest LEDs on the market. And we’re also developing the energy technologies of tomorrow – for example, processes to capture and securely store the CO₂ emitted by fossil fuel power plants.

At September 30, 2007, the Industry Sector comprised the businesses of the Groups Automation and Drives, Industrial Solutions and Services, Transportation Systems, Siemens Building Technologies, and OSRAM; the Energy Sector comprised the businesses of the Power Generation Group and the Power Transmission and Distribution Group; and the Healthcare Sector comprised the businesses of the Medical Solutions Group.

In fiscal 2007, Siemens researchers submitted 8,267 in vention reports, *seven percent more than the year before. We filed 5,060 patent applications, an 11 percent increase over fiscal 2007. All in all, we generated 38 inventions and 23 patent applications per workday.

As the world’s first full-service diagnostics company in the healthcare industry, we’re integrating innovations in three fields: imaging, laboratory diagnostics and healthcare IT. In the first field, we’re constantly improving our range of computed tomography and magnetic resonance scanners and ultrasound systems. In the second, we’re pioneering new laboratory techniques and applications such as biomarker solutions – which help doctors diagnose cancer, infections and coronary diseases at the earliest possible stage – and the world’s first magnetic resonance / positron emission tomography (MR / PET) system, which can pinpoint illnesses like Alzheimer’s disease long before the first symptoms appear. In the third field, we offer advanced electronic networks that link clinical data across the entire healthcare continuum, in order to break down eliminating barriers in communications, collaboration and decision-making between hospitals, doctors’ offices, pharmacies and insurers. Integrating these innovations is enabling us to realize our vision of fully personalized medicine – treatments optimized for each individual patient – and open the door to a new era of knowledge-based ­preventive medicine.