A Glimpse Inside
Industrial AI in Action at Siemens Erlangen
Two visits to Siemens’ Erlangen Electronics Factory, six interviews and a series of short-form videos exploring Industrial AI, robotics and how new technologies are actually being tested and used on the factory floor.
Image: Kevin O’Donovan / A Bit of This and ThatThis started with a visit to Siemens’ Erlangen Electronics Factory just after SPS in Nuremberg. The initial focus was on some of the Industrial AI work underway there, including the AI-supported pick-and-pack use case. It gave me the opportunity to understand the technology, meet some of the people behind it and start identifying the stories that were worth exploring in more detail.
A couple of weeks later, in the middle of December, I was back in Erlangen. This time Siemens was running an on-site proof of concept with Humanoid, testing one of its humanoid robots for moving tote boxes around the factory. Rather than treating that as a standalone robot demo, we used the opportunity to explore the wider picture — what Siemens was testing, why they were testing it, what they were learning and how technologies such as Industrial AI, robotics and digital twins were beginning to come together in a real production environment.
Across the two visits we ended up recording six separate interviews. Those conversations were then developed into longer-form videos as well as a series of shorter clips and reels for use across the different platforms. The whole programme was coordinated closely with Siemens around factory access, the availability of the people involved and the wider communications schedule, particularly as we moved into the run-up to Hannover Messe.
The visible output was the interviews, demonstrations, videos and reels. But there was quite a bit happening behind that: understanding the technologies before arriving, working out which stories were worth pursuing, identifying the right people to speak with, preparing enough to ask useful questions without making the conversations feel scripted, and then shaping the material afterwards into content that could be released over time.
That is really what A Glimpse Inside is about. Getting access is only the starting point. The work is in understanding what is happening, getting to the people actually doing it, asking the questions that take you beyond the demo, and turning a couple of visits on site into a coherent story that people can actually learn from.
