After visiting Siemens’ Arena of Digitalization in Bad Neustadt, Germany, SKF decided to embark on a digitalization journey at its own locations. With almost 100 factories and nearly 41,000 employees, the potential was significant for SKF. The bearing company recognized the opportunity to further accelerate its ambition to become a leader in digital manufacturing. It wasn’t about trying out a solution, but revolutionizing how SKF works.

Thus, a collaborative partnership was initiated between Siemens and SKF, with both parties bringing their expertise to the table – Siemens brings its know-how with digitalization, SKF brings its more than 100 years of experience in bearing manufacturing.

All was done by using the holistic Digital Enterprise and Digital Enterprise Services approach for driving the digital transformation of a company with the support of dedicated Siemens experts: 

Co-creation as a driver on the digitalization journey  
One of the first activities was a scoping workshop involving a joint, cross-functional Siemens-SKF team. This was more than a strategy meeting, as it involved colleagues from across SKF, including salespeople, application engineers, product engineers, production staff and shop floor technicians. That way, those who would really be impacted by the solutions were able to provide their input. To complete the big picture, Siemens also had all necessary expertise and know-how on board, including technology experts, digitalization consultants and service experts  to make this partnership a success.

Increased transparency across the entire lifecycle  
In order to create a digital factory the aim was to connect all assets in Airasca, from machines to measuring devices, as well as 3D designs, embedded software, documentation and more. For this, SKF deployed an end-to-end solution linking Siemens’ Industrial Connectivity Services to other Xcelerator portfolio elements such as MindSphere, the industrial IoT as a service solution, and the Mendix app platform 

Value creation through digital transformation 
Siemens has a concept – Digital Enterprise – to establish vertical and horizontal integrated architectures in its own factories. That gives the company a big advantage, because it can draw on real-life experience when implementing digital threads in a customer’s brownfield environments.

SKF’s mission is to be the undisputed leader in the bearing business. The company does this by offering solutions that reduce friction and CO2 emissions, while at the same time increasing machine uptime and performance. SKF’s products and services all relate to the rotating shaft, including bearings, seals, lubrication management, artificial intelligence, and wireless condition monitoring. SKF is represented in more than 130 countries and has around 17,000 distributor locations worldwide. Annual sales in 2021 were SEK 81,732 billion (~ EUR 8 billion) and the number of employees was 42,602.