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A factory with a large building and machinery equipment inside, possibly a switchgear factory.

Digitalization saved a 50-year-old factory in India

Siemens Xcelerator transformed Siemens' 50-year-old low-voltage switchgear factory in Kalwa near Mumbai into a sustainable Digital Enterprise.

The Kalwa factory’s transformation into a fully digitalized, sustainable facility is a perfect example of how Siemens Xcelerator can provide a competitive advantage by accelerating digital transformation, enabling the factory to operate more sustainably, reduce overall production time and increase manufacturing flexibility.

Siemens' low-voltage switchgear facility in Kalwa near Mumbai, is the third of its kind globally after factories in Germany and China. The sustainable Digital Enterprise sets a global benchmark with its end-to-end digitalization across the entire value chain. The technical and engineering expertise required to reinvent this decades-old facility serves as an inspiring example for enterprises embarking on their digitalization journey.

The low-voltage switchgear products manufactured here are utilized in diverse applications, including industrial, institutional, critical power, and commercial sectors. These products meet essential criteria such as modularity, a wide range of variants, reliability, safety, efficiency, and world-class quality. The Kalwa factory represents a significant engineering achievement, delivering tangible benefits such as enhanced flexibility, efficiency, quality, and sustainability.

Person in black shirt standing against white wall, holding a dark object with blurred background.

Single line producing 350+ variants.

Higher efficiency and flexibility

  • Before digitalization, the factory operated with three separate production lines, manufacturing 77 product variants. Today, with a fully integrated and digitally controlled production line, the factory can easily produce over 350 variants.
  • Previously, a product was manufactured every 21 seconds across the three lines. Despite the increased product specifications and variations, the cycle time has now been reduced to just 9 seconds per product on a single line, highlighting the remarkable improvements in efficiency and flexibility.

The transformation was achieved by overhauling traditional processes through the introduction of digital solutions across the value chain and vertically integrating business processes. Using Siemens Xcelerator portfolio offerings such as NX, Teamcenter, TIA, and MES, the team developed a Digital Twin of the product, production and performance integrating the horizontal process right from the product design to the production design, across engineering, execution and finally to the service level. IT/OT Convergence also helped build the critical vertical integration between the enterprise level to the shopfloor.

The Switchgear Factory combines state-of-the art production methods with the latest technologies such as the Digital Twin, IT/OT Convergence and MES adopting sustainable industrial practices making it a sustainable Digital Enterprise.

Integrating and digitalizing of the entire value chain

Product design

Siemens' software seamlessly connects design and manufacturing engineering, ensuring validation and optimization through a holistic approach that integrates mechanical design, electronics, software, package design, and simulation. This comprehensive method allows companies to swiftly adapt to evolving market demands, enhancing product performance while reducing time to market.

Person in black shirt standing against white wall, holding a dark object with blurred background.
A person is standing in front of a white wall with a blurry background.

Production planning

Fast and flexible production scheduling enables informed decision-making for short-term and day-to-day operations. Utilizing advanced algorithms, it balances demand with capacity to create realistic and achievable schedules. This approach maximizes efficiency, reducing both production time and costs, ensuring smoother operations and optimized output.

Services

Leverage Digital Twins to connect and optimize processes for design, systems, software, simulation, and visualization, resolving problems before they become real. By connecting people, automating and streamlining product lifecycle processes, and providing visibility to make innovative product decisions. Industrial IoT as a service ensures full transparency over operations.

Group of professionals in business attire posing in front of a Siemens corporate building entrance
A visual representation of a product development process with various stages and icons.

Combining the real and digital worlds

The Siemens factory in Kalwa can now manufacture over five million devices annually. The low-voltage switchgear factory has achieved end-to-end digitalization across its value chain through Product Lifecycle Management software such as NX and Teamcenter, Totally Integrated Automation (TIA) Portal, and Manufacturing Execution System (MES). These solutions enable the design of products, tools and equipment, master data management, automation, process simulation, and product traceability.

The company recognizes this factory as a standard for considerable productivity enhancements digitalization provides, while simultaneously showcasing Siemens digital product portfolio.

The digitalized factory is proof of how adopting digitalization will help Indian industry, especially small and medium enterprises (SMEs), achieve manufacturing excellence. SMEs can utilize digitalization to address growing demands such as mastering increasing product and process complexity, reducing time to market, adapting to changing market requirements, deliver individualized products and secure continuous product improvement while remaining sustainable.

Improved sustainability

Energy efficiency at the factory is twofold. The entire site aims to be carbon-free by 2030, which means that reducing energy consumption is a top priority. Also, the energy used will be generated from on-site renewables. Data analytics plays a critical role in increasing energy efficiency and making the most of renewable energy. The factory partly uses the energy generated from the rooftop installed solar thus resulting in reduction in the energy consumption.

This holistic approach enabled by Siemens Xcelerator allows enterprises to not only operate with more agility but also more sustainably, securing long-term growth and competitiveness.
October 2024

A Siemens building with a modern architectural design and a blue sky in the background.

Proven outcomes at Siemens Kalwa factory

Production capacity: 35% increase in production capacity from 1’1 to 1’5 pieces per year
Sustainability: Carbon footprint reduced by 86%
Energy consumption: Energy consumption reduced by 394MWh
Flexibility: Product variants increased from >77 in 3 lines to >350 in 1 line
Time to Market: Cycle time reduced from ~21 seconds to ~9 seconds
Quality: 22 quality parameters checks in 60 seconds to 68 checks in 9 seconds

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