The Siemens technology group is to be the integration partner for the Volkswagen Industrial Cloud, Volkswagen and Siemens announced on Friday.

Siemens will play a key role in ensuring that machinery and equipment of different manufacturers at the 122 Volkswagen plants are networked efficiently to Amazon’s cloud.

Volkswagen on Wednesday said it has teamed up with Amazon Web Services to link up and integrate data from plants, machines and systems, as a way to improve and standardize its production systems and processes. Siemens is joining the cooperation as an integration partner.

Siemens and machinery and equipment suppliers will make applications and apps from the MindSphere Internet of Things system available in the Volkswagen Industrial Cloud. Volkswagen and Siemens intend to develop new functions and services for the Industrial Cloud together with machinery and equipment suppliers; these will then be available to all future Volkswagen partners.

“We intend to make our Volkswagen Industrial Cloud a partner network with digital functions bringing benefits to all the participating companies. In Siemens, we have secured a strong partner with outstanding digitalization and industry expertise,” says Oliver Blume, Chairman of the Executive Board of Porsche AG and Member of the Board of Management of Volkswagen Aktiengesellschaft responsible for ‘Production’.

Siemens and MindSphere partners also offer applications for the predictive maintenance of machines with optimized maintenance cycles calculated in advance. Via the cloud, these can then be rolled out to all the Volkswagen plants. It will be possible to control Volkswagen’s production environment and supply chain even more efficiently because the connected suppliers and machinery producers will also benefit from the knowledge gained from data analysis.

With the Volkswagen Industrial Cloud, that is being developed jointly with Amazon Web Services (AWS), the Volkswagen Group is laying the foundation for the seamless digitalization of its production and logistics. In the long term, this will also include the integration of Volkswagen’s global supply chain with more than 30,000 locations of over 1,500 suppliers and partner companies. In future, the Industrial Cloud will also be available as a platform for external partners.