Siemens Digital Industries Software has announced that its Additive Manufacturing Network platform has been has implemented at Schaeffler, a global automotive and industrial supplier, to connect its community of design engineers with its AM Fab Shop for additive manufacturing to facilitate collaboration, speed time to production and to foster greater application of the benefits of additive manufacturing (AM) within its value-chain.

Siemens’ AM Network digitalizes the additive manufacturing workflows (order-to-delivery process chain) of our customers and partners, as well as enables them to apply additive manufacturing on an industrial-grade and to scale their business. With the Siemens AM Network, our customers and partners are enabled to build up their own additive manufacturing ecosystem (company-internally as well as with their trusted external suppliers/partners), and additionally to join the existing ecosystem that we have already established over the past years on the AM Network platform.

With demand for additively manufactured parts growing exponentially among its R&D designers and engineers, Schaeffler has adopted Siemens’ AM Network as the single platform for all engineering/ technical collaboration throughout the entire AM order-to-delivery process. 

This cloud-native platform enables it to take advantage of the benefits of additive manufacturing more quickly, efficiently and at greater rate of scale by digitalizing and streamlining its additive manufacturing workflows. R&D designers and engineers are guided through the AM part qualification process, as defined by the AM Fab Shop, while shop floor operations and machine utilization have been streamlined to increase efficiency. Time and effort are saved with increased throughput while fostering a wider understanding of the benefits of additive, better formalization of best practice and ultimately, more efficient execution and more timely delivery of the successfully 3D printed parts.

“Siemens‘ Additive Manufacturing Network platform was selected not only to assist orchestrating the end-to-end order-to-delivery process for industrial additive manufacturing, but was perceived as a long-term partner to grow with and to explore further opportunities to create a fully digitized end-to-end AM workflow and value chain,” said Carsten Merklein, vice president advanced manufacturing technologies, Schaeffler. “The Additive Manufacturing Network also perfectly blends into the Siemens’ NX implementation currently being evaluated for AM at Schaeffler.”

Schaeffler will present alongside Siemens’ Additive Manufacturing team at Formnext 2021, Frankfurt am Main, November 16 to 19, as well as at the virtual Siemens AM Summit 2021, November 30 – December. 1, with a presentation entitled “AM made easy – how Schaeffler facilitates implementation and usage of AM with Siemens AM Network.”