How Siemens is turning Erlangen into a high-tech campus

Siemens is investing heavily in Erlangen and is turning the site into a technology campus for power electronics, digitalization and the industrial metaverse. Behind this stands a message that extends far beyond Siemens: The future of industrial production in Germany will be decided at the connection between software and the shopfloor.

When the future of Germany as an industrial location is discussed, it is often about energy prices, bureaucracy, the shortage of skilled workers and international competitiveness. All of that is important. But sometimes a specific location shows better than any fundamental speech what it is essentially about.

The Siemens equipment plant in Erlangen is one such place. Here, production is not the only thing happening. Here it becomes visible how industrial value creation is changing. A high-tech campus is emerging from a traditional production site with more than 50 years of history, one that brings development, production, digitalization, sustainability and customer experience more closely together.

500 million for the transformation

Siemens is investing around 500 million euros in the transformation of the Erlangen site. By 2027, a center for logistics, service and flexible automation is initially to be created, followed by by 2030 by a center for development and innovation for power electronics as well as additional production areas. Siemens describes Erlangen as a future flagship site for the industrial metaverse and as a strong sign for Germany as a business location.

The industrial metaverse still sounds like a thing of the future to some. In Erlangen, it is becoming industrial practice. The core is not a virtual gimmick, but a tangible productivity approach: Real processes, products and facilities are digitally simulated, tested and optimized before they are physically implemented. Digital twins and AI are intended to make development and production processes faster, safer and more efficient.

This is precisely where the strategic significance lies. Modern factories are no longer just physical places. They are cyber-physical systems. Their performance depends on how well engineering, production, automation, data analysis, software and people work together. Those who master this connection can better manage product variety, ensure quality earlier, accelerate ramp-ups and use resources more efficiently.

Flexible automation enables cost-effectiveness

At the Erlangen equipment plant, this logic is already visible in ongoing operations. Digital twins support not only simulations, but also product design, manufacturing engineering and commissioning. AI helps with quality assurance, robotics and process optimization. Flexible automation enables cost-effective automation even where traditional concepts fail due to medium volumes or orders with many variants.

In doing so, Siemens addresses a core question of German industry: How can high-tech production remain successful at a high-wage location? The answer is: by not trying to endlessly push old efficiency logics to their limits, but by implementing new technologies and taking the employees along on the digital transformation journey. Speed, flexibility, sustainability and control intelligence are becoming competitive factors.

Clear sustainability ambition

It is also remarkable that Siemens is linking the transformation with a clear sustainability ambition. According to Siemens, the new Technology Campus is being consistently developed toward a zero-emissions site. Already in the conceptual phase, buildings were virtually planned and simulated in order to take sustainability goals into account at an early stage. When dismantling existing buildings, Siemens relied on fully electric construction machinery and a high rate of material recycling; 96 percent of the construction rubble is to be reused for the new building.

This is more than a construction project. It is an industrial policy statement. Digitalization and sustainability are not being treated as opposites, but as two sides of the same transformation. Those who intelligently control energy, material, space and processes not only produce more efficiently, but also in a more resource-conserving way.

For Siemens, Erlangen will in the future fulfill several roles at once. The site remains a production plant for key components of industrial automation and digitalization. It is a lead factory because the standards and blueprints developed there can be transferred to other plants. It is Customer Zero because Siemens tests new technologies in its own production environment. And it is a reference site where customers and partners can experience what Green Lean Digital and the path to autonomous manufacturing look like in concrete terms.

Interplay of real production and digital intelligence

Precisely for this reason, the Mechanical Engineering Summit Salon at this location is particularly exciting. The Salon brings the discussion to where the questions of mechanical engineering become practically visible: How does the Industrial Metaverse move from vision into operation? How can AI, digital twins and robotics be deployed effectively in production? How does digitalization become a measurable contribution to quality, time-to-market, flexibility and productivity?

The message from Erlangen is clear: The factory of the future does not emerge through the replacement of individual machines. It emerges through a new interplay of real production and digital intelligence. And it requires flexibility as well as the further training of employees - a cultural change. Because when processes become increasingly data-driven, AI-supported and more autonomous, roles, decisions and responsibilities in the plant also change.

For Germany as an industrial location, this represents a major opportunity. Erlangen shows that high-tech production is possible in this country - if companies are willing to transform deeply, combine software expertise with production knowledge and understand sustainability as an operational management metric. This is exactly what mechanical engineering must talk about now. And that is exactly why this discussion belongs at a production site.