Owing to automation company Siemens’ diverse portfolio, the company can provide traditional and digital technologies in the electrical and automation space to its clients.

In the mining sector specifically, Siemens Large Drives South Africa country CEO Tim Walwyn says that Siemens provides end-to-end electrification, automation and digitalization solutions.

“We supply everything from heavy current main power distribution, large motor and drive systems, right through to process control systems, package automation, and then a big portfolio of software for optimizing mining operations across the board,” he says.

The company, he adds, is “quite embedded” in the process, and works closely with its customers to find the right solution for an application.

Additionally, with the company’s digital portfolio, Walwyn says Siemens can “provide a unique insight into where all the best applications are for these digital technologies”.

“We’re vertically integrated across so much of what our customers do, and that allows us to tap into a client’s application for their products and services, and the sectors in which they operate,” he says.

Siemens, while active in the mining sector, is also active in several other industries like automotive, oil and gas, water, wastewater, manufacturing, and food and beverage.

“From an application point of view, Siemens uses the latest technologies, high efficiency motors and control systems to give customers optimum transparency throughout their entire process,” Walwyn says of sustainability, adding that “it’s about understanding your resource use, optimizing it, minimizing energy consumption and water use, and providing a safe environment for people to work in”.

He adds that the company is focused on linking technology and what it can do from a sustainability perspective.

Further, when referencing the post-Covid-19 economic environment, Walwyn says the company was “very fortunate in that a lot of technologies the company provides became a focus point during the pandemic”.

“To some extent, we were sheltered from the worst impacts of the pandemic because a lot of our customers needed to find new ways to continue their operations, and Siemens’ technologies helped them with that,” he comments.

Over the course of the next year, Siemens will continue to focus on the digitalization journey and continue exploring new ways of combining its digital portfolio with traditional elements to “add more value” for customers.

“We're focusing on growing our software team, adding more and more skills in that space so that we can really develop pilots and work closely with our customers on really exciting initiatives in the space of mobile mining, gathering intelligence, monitoring heavy haul trucks to try to optimize those operations,” Walwyn enthuses.

Siemens will also be optimising a range of different mining processes, and “bring together all of the diverse elements in a portfolio that helps customers do better in their business”.

For more information please visit: www.siemens.co.za/sld