At Hannover Messe 2024, Siemens presents the first generative artificial intelligence (AI) product for engineering in an industrial environment. Accordingly, the Siemens Industrial Copilot, the generative AI-powered assistant, seamlessly connects to the Totally Integrated Automation (TIA) Portal.

This will enable engineering teams to find the right help topic and to generate a basic visualization and code faster for programmable logic controllers (PLC). As a result, they will be able to significantly reduce their workload and offload repetitive tasks to the Siemens Industrial Copilot. In addition, the engineering of complex tasks will become less susceptible to errors. This in turn reduces development times and boosts quality and productivity over the long term.

The Siemens Industrial Copilot for TIA Portal Engineering will be available for download from the Siemens Xcelerator marketplace starting in summer 2024. 

First generative AI-powered product for industrial engineering

At Hannover Messe 2023, Siemens and Microsoft jointly unveiled their vision for a generative AI-powered assistant. Therefore, the Siemens Industrial Copilot includes automation and process simulation information from Siemens’ digital business platform Siemens Xcelerator. It comes with the large language models in Microsoft Azure OpenAI Service. For example, to augment the creation and optimization of code in software for factory automation.

Last year, in collaboration with Schaeffler AG, Siemens presented a generative AI-enhanced production machine for the first time. Siemens is now moving from theory to scale with its first generative AI-powered product for engineering at Hannover Messe 2024. 

The Siemens Industrial Copilot will enable industrial customers of all sizes to harness the power of industrial-grade generative AI to transform their operations. Industrial automation solution provider Grenzebach Group is an early adopter of the Siemens Industrial Copilot. Particularly, it is testing how generative AI can augment industrial automation engineering and support engineers. Particularly, in reducing time, effort, and probability of errors. 

New features for the Siemens Industrial Copilot

Features of the new Siemens Industrial Copilot for TIA Portal Engineering include automated code generation in structured control language (SCL). Particularly, the TIA Portal can take the code suggestion directly from the AI. Thus, eliminating the need to copy and paste.

It is also possible for the Siemens Industrial Copilot to explain SCL code blocks or to guide. Also, to easily create an initial machine or plant visualization in WinCC Unified. In addition, engineering teams can search Siemens manuals in natural language. Customers will have the option to access their private instance of Azure OpenAI Service which doesn’t use customer data to retrain models. 

“Siemens makes automation easy. The Siemens Industrial Copilot is bringing industrial generative AI to the shopfloor and will be an indispensable part of the engineering process in the future. With the easy and seamless connection to our TIA Portal, we’re the first to offer a generative AI product for engineering to industrial companies worldwide,” says Rainer Brehm, CEO Factory Automation at Siemens Digital Industries.

23 April 2024