Mining: Tailor-made Modernization the Future Is Today Cement: Cemat – 40 Years in Service the Magazine for the Mining and Cement Industries

MineralsFocus Edzard Lübben " With some 17,500 software engineers worldwide, Siemens counts among the world's biggest software companies. " Editorial | MineralsFocus 4/2015 3 Products from Siemens are built to last. A prime example is the mine winder, which Siemens started supplying over 110 years ago. Or our Gearless Mill Drives – some of which have been in operation for over 40 years. Throughout their service life, these machines have been modernized and kept up to date. The same approach has been taken for Cemat, the process control system for the cement industry, which is now celebrating 40 years in service: All along, Cemat and Minerals Automation Standard – the Simatic PCS 7-based process control system for the specific requirements of the mining industry – have been continuously updated. But at Siemens, it's never change for the sake of change: customers are our top priority, and the guiding principle is that innovations answer their challenges and respond to the industry's key concerns. In today's world, software is playing a bigger and bigger role. Many are surprised, in fact, to learn that Siemens employs some 17,500 software engineers worldwide. These engineers work on a complete portfolio of industry software to support customers along the entire value chain – from product design, production planning and engineering to actual production and service. Their work results in automation and digitaliza-tion solutions for all industrial verticals Siemens serves. In this issue of MineralsFocus, we show how an increased use of automation and digitalization technologies can help minerals producers to better adjust to changes in the market. This technology is part of a bigger development happening under the umbrella of Industrie 4.0 – also known internationally as the Internet of Things – which is an initiative in the German government's high-tech strategy. The vision of Indus-trie 4.0: machines largely organize themselves, supply chains automatically coordinate themselves, and products supply all their production data to the machines on which they'll be manufactured. But getting to this vision won't happen overnight. Incre-mental steps are necessary. Today some essential steps can be taken in the minerals industry to increase the degree of digitalization. So whether we're talking about tools for automation , engineering or planning, minerals operators get assistance to counter some of the current problems in the market, such as declining grades and price volatility. And they get closer to the vision of Industry 4.0. Aside from addressing …