photo: Siemens press materials/Eduard Palíšek
Eduard Palíšek, CEO of the Czech branch of Siemens and a member of the Board of Directors of the Confederation of Industry of the Czech Republic, visited his alma mater, the Faculty of Business at the VUT, to give an interview to the student magazine zvut.cz on the topic of digitalization. In his opinion, digitalization will not avoid any industry, even small businesses, and trades. However, Czech companies are lagging in comparison with foreign ones.
The problem with Czech companies is that they rely on standard production methods and base their competitiveness on low labor expenses. When digitization gets attempted, it is often just the application of separate and nonconceptual solutions. Siemens works with the concept of two digital twins - the digital twin of the product itself and the digital twin of the production process. The process allows digital design, capacity, unique testing processes, product optimization, and product modification. The absence of digitalization would have made the whole process more costly and lengthy. Older production methods can work if the company creates the same product. When there is a need to innovate, react to a changing environment, or customer wishes, digitization is a necessity in terms of economy, time, and capacity.
According to a recent survey, in the past 10 years, 16% of companies have introduced automation technologies, 8% of companies have introduced robotics technologies, and 4% of companies have introduced artificial intelligence. The question remains to what extent companies have dedicated themselves to setting up a digitalization strategy. According to Palíšek, the Czech Republic is still at the beginning compared to other countries, where not only large enterprises but also smaller businesses and sole traders are aware of the importance and the inevitability of the digitalization trend. Staying behind is a significant threat to the Czech economy. Digitization should affect all sectors, from construction to agriculture to social services.
One of the problems lies in the mindset of small businesses, which often get the impression that they cannot afford digitalization. According to Palíšek, it is enough to shift the resources spent on the ineffective handling of materials and energy to digitalization. The state should also get involved through systematic support and with the digitalization of the state administration.
Siemens in particular offers digitization by linking hardware and software. As a result, it has probably become the only company on a global scale that enables the complete, interconnected digitization of the entire value chain. Many companies specialize in partial solutions but fail to offer a coherent digital and hardware system. Siemens also owns several unique solutions and patents.