As a reasult of the a modernization project at Bayer CropScience in Dormagen, several production plants were identified to which need to be upgraded to the latest requirements of a digital company. All necessary supplies and services which need to be be designed, offered, implemented and provided should come from a single source.

As part of the modernization for the seven production plants, Siemens service experts equipped each of the plant with the Industrial Automation DataCenter.
The Industrial Automation DataCenter is an individually configurable, local cloud solution for a plant (on-premise). It uses virtualization to integrate a wide range of applications (e.g. SIMATIC PCS 7, SIMATIC Step7, TIA Portal, WinCC, SIMIT and COMOS up to third-party software) on a common hardware platform. Various hardware variants enable individual scaling of the data center including all necessary lifecycle services. The offer is rounded off by systems and functions for data archiving, backup and restore, IT security and increased availability.

Through intensive cooperation between Siemens and Bayer CropScience AG, the requirements with regard to the special features of production, the network architecture and the existing automation systems were determined and measures for conversion and preparation were developed.

In order to meet the requirements for the availability of the overall system, the system platform was designed on the basis of VMware vSAN technology.
A security workshop, a factory acceptance test and the implementation of specific customer requirements were successfully implemented within the scope of the project.

Around 2000 different chemical products are manufactured at Chempark in Dormagen. The production focuses on the development and manufacture of crop protection products, polymers, plastics and rubber.