“We See a Positive Aerospace & Defense (A&D) Outlook in Türkiye to Generate High Growth Rate and Support our Customer’s Ambitions”
Defence Turkey: What can you tell us about Siemens’ participation at Farnborough International Airshow 2024 (FIA24)? Did the Exhibition meet your expectations?
Özgür İLERİ: FIA 2024 was the busiest air show Siemens has ever participated in. This year's show exceeded our expectations. Our chalet was twice as busy as it was at Paris Air Show in 2023 and three times as busy as at Farnborough Airshow in 2022. We saw a lot of interest by aerospace clients in how to tap into digital transformation and generative artificial intelligence (AI) to make their operations run faster and more efficiently.
Defence Turkey: How is the balance of commercial (aviation) sales and defense/aerospace sales working at Siemens Digital Industries Software’s global aerospace portfolio? Do you see changes in this balance in near future?
Özgür İLERİ: We have robust business in both the commercial and defense sectors. In the next few years, business in the commercial sector will focus on manufacturing, as there are few new commercial aircraft being designed right now. Manufacturing is on the rise for defense, there also several manned fighters and military drones in development. Siemens is providing innovative solutions to accelerate digital transformation in both of these sectors.
Defence Turkey: What innovative technology areas will Siemens Digital Industries Software will focus on in the field of Aerospace and Defense in the near term?
Özgür İLERİ: Siemens industry leading digital twin technology is powered by industrial AI and connections to the industrial metaverse. This includes partnerships with Microsoft, NVIDIA, Amazon Web Services, and Sony. Siemens and Sony will release a new AR/VR headset with deep integration to Siemens NX that delivers 3D physics based photorealistic visuals next December. This new technology will allow designers to step into a 3D world where their designs come to life, and they can collaborate in real time with colleagues in real time on opposites sides of the globe. This capability will leverage the industrial metaverse in new ways that will change the way mechanical design is done. Siemens also has new generative AI features in Teamcenter that leverage a natural language interface and Retrieval Augmented Generation (RAG) to allow companies to quickly find and correlate decades of their legacy data in ways that were never before possible. Siemens ties together all these capabilities thorough digital threads enabled by the open ecosystem in Siemens Xcelerator.
Defence Turkey: How would you assess the current position of Siemens in Aerospace & Defense (A&D) market, where do you see the strong points of Siemens and how does it differ from its competitors?
Özgür İLERİ: Siemens is the industrial software leader in defense across the world. We have the world’s leading PLM solution. We lead in these areas because of the items described in the previous question.
Defence Turkey: Despite there is a desire to perform digital transformation, most A&D agencies face unique challenges that complicate transformation, especially when embracing cloud-enabled services such as Artificial Intelligence (AI) and machine learning. Can you elaborate on Siemens’ cloud solutions?
Özgür İLERİ: Siemens partners with Amazon Web Services and Microsoft Azure to offer a host of certified private clouds services and cloud enabled products in a managed environment. We have brought managed, cloud enabled, configuration controlled mechanical design environments online and ready for customer use five days after the PO was placed.
Defence Turkey: Today’s military assets are information systems and each generates a massive amount of data, up to a terabyte of operations and maintenance data in a single sortie or more. Without digital transformation, much of this data can remain untapped thus limiting potential gains. How much time, effort and money does Siemens set aside on R&D annually to assist digital transformation at every level with technology solutions for A&D agencies?
Özgür İLERİ: Siemens has invested billions in R&D each year. Innovation is our capital. In fiscal year 2023 our R&D expenditures reached €6,2 Billion. Some 50.029 employees working in various research departments across Siemens created 5.400 inventions and filed 2.900 patent applications – claiming 6th place in the European Patent Offices patent ranking. Furthermore, we established 16 Research and Innovation Ecosystems in which we collaborate closely with academia, start-ups and universities.
Defence Turkey: How many countries/governments and A&D companies around the world benefit from Siemens services. Is it possible for you to share the number of them and the names of a few of them?
Özgür İLERİ: We work with companies and governments across the world. The US Air Force has standardized their PLM on Teamcenter. Soon, they will manage all of their technical data in Teamcenter. We are also working with BAE Systems, General Atomics and Lockheed Martin.
Defence Turkey: Can you elaborate on Siemens’ efforts and projects that focused on safe and sustainable aerospace? What is Siemens is doing for sustainability? How would you summarize Siemens’ solutions that can help OEM manufacturers and suppliers, as well as start-ups prepare themselves for the sustainable future with a flexible, scalable, traceable product development process?
Özgür İLERİ: Siemens approaches sustainability in multiple ways:
Better more efficient end products that require less energy to operate
Better more efficient factories that require less energy to operate
More efficient industrial software to operates faster and uses less energy
All of the above is enabled by Siemens digital twin technology that is described above.
Defence Turkey: Can you elaborate on the future of AI-driven product design in A&D?
Özgür İLERİ: Current AI technology operates on text and visual data. It has not incorporated the langue of engineering. Future AI technology will incorporate the modalities of systems, software, and hardware engineering. It will do this in private secure ways by leveraging RAG technology to augment large language models. The AR/VR technology described above will also make designing in 2D obsolete. The future of all design in immersive 3D.
Defence Turkey: What can you tell us about the workforce issues the A&D industry is currently facing?
Özgür İLERİ: The A&D industry is facing workforce issues across the globe. There will be more money invested in A&D in the next five years than their will be people to spend it. Digital Transformation Maturity is the best strategy any company can have to address their workforce issues. See this article for more information:
Defence Turkey: Considering the heightened cyber-threat, what kind of work and precautions does Siemens carry out to assure information security against cyber threats? How much money Siemens Digital Industries Software invests each year in cybersecurity?
Özgür İLERİ: Siemens has several cyber security certifications. Cyber threats to U.S. national security go well beyond military targets and affect all aspects of society. Hackers and foreign governments are increasingly able to launch sophisticated intrusions into the networks and systems that control critical infrastructure. Given the integrated nature of cyberspace, computer-induced failures of power grids, communication networks, and field operations, could cause massive disruption.
The U.S. Federal Government needs a cyber security partner with the technology, expertise and track-record of preventing, thwarting and defeating the world’s most sophisticated cyber threats to date.
To ensure comprehensive protection of critical infrastructure, federal agencies must protect all levels simultaneously, from field operations to facility management systems. As integrators of Siemens’ globally trusted cyber security solutions, Siemens Government Technologies (SGT) helps government organizations build layer defenses with a security solution providing 360° of protection.
Network Security
System Administration
Application Security
Endpoint, Server and Device Security
Identity and Access Management
Data Protection
Threat Protection and Monitoring
Asset Management and Supply Chain
High Availability and Disaster Recovery
Incident Response
Policy, Audit and Training
Defence Turkey: Focusing on Türkiye now, can you elaborate on the current status of your cooperation with both TUSAŞ and other Turkish aerospace companies, including airliners?
Özgür İLERİ: We have a strong cooperation with all TUSAŞ group companies, especially TAI, TEI and TRMotor. Various solutions from Siemens Digital Industries Software such as CAD, CAM, simulation and PLM are used in almost all the projects at TUSAŞ group. This helps aerospace customers to design and manufacture their products much faster and efficiently while not compromising the quality of their products.
It’s also worth noting that in 2018 Siemens won a competitive evaluation over 10 years with TAI, the center of technology in design, development, manufacturing, integration of aerospace systems, modernization and after sales support in Turkey.
Defence Turkey: What’s keeping Siemens Digital Industries Software busy in Turkish market at these days?
Özgür İLERİ: Being the only company in the world that brings both mechanical and electrical/electronics solutions for engineering design, simulation, and production, we are working on to support our customers to keep the pace with ever-accelerating new technologies to help them improve their competitiveness in their respected industries. Our role is to help our customers find the best ways to design and produce their products whether they are in aerospace, defense, automotive, marine, machinery, process or energy industries.
Siemens invests heavily on new trending technologies like AI, Metaverse, AR/VR etc. and by integrating such technologies to our ecosystem of software and hardware solutions.
Our aim is to grow with our customers by using such technologies in our solutions and in their processes.
Defence Turkey: Could you give us an overview of programs in A&D field that Siemens is interested in Türkiye in the short to medium term?
Özgür İLERİ: All the new and existing A&D programs in Türkiye are interesting for Siemens. We believe our unique integrated portfolio of solutions from design software to production automation, product lifecycle management to manufacturing operations management, from engineering simulations to motion control devices for CNCs, industrial internet of things to low-code application development platforms offer tremendous value for the complex and advanced A&D projects.
In the last three years alone, Siemens has sold software, hardware and maintenance contracts to just approximately 1.000 customers. Siemens intends to grow its A&D customer base in the coming years with greater collaboration with its partners in the region and greater investment in the tools and people needed to drive customer success.
Defence Turkey: How do you see Türkiye's position in Siemens’ future business projection?
Özgür İLERİ: Türkiye is a high-growth, highly innovative, technologically advanced market economy, with one of highest rates of start-ups in Europe.
Türkiye’s long-standing ambition to establish a self-sufficient A&D industry has led to considerable industrial growth, and Ankara is now regarded as an innovator and a major player in A&D. As such, Türkiye has become a strategic market for Siemens as the Turkish A&D market is growing and showing greater potential.
Looking at our own software business unit (Siemens Digital Industries Software), there is a lot of potential for expansion in Türkiye. We have made investments to support this by recently opening a new office to accelerate digital transformation, demonstrating the faith we have in the Turkish market and our commitment to our customers. With this extended direct presence, together with our specialist partner ecosystem, the support and services that customers have available will continue to be enhanced across the entire region. Siemens will become the largest industrial software vendor in Türkiye in terms of offerings and delivery and services capability, with a team of over 18 sales, services, support and R&D specialists.
(Locally R&D has been playing an exceedingly important role in the success of Siemens Türkiye for over 167 years so far. More than 1.000 researchers in our country are developing technologies that will bolster our efforts in electrification, automation, and digitalization fields.)
In addition, with the increase of young engineers entering the A&D workforce industry and the number of successful A&D companies in Türkiye, we see a positive A&D outlook in Türkiye to generate high growth rate and support our customer’s ambitions.
Defence Turkey: Would you like to add anything in the way of a message for our readers?
Özgür İLERİ: We would like to emphasize the impact Siemens is making in Türkiye through two concrete examples:
Siemens is contributing to driving transformation in Türkiye:
Siemens is a member of MEXT, Türkiye’s digital transformation and competence development center. Created by Turkish Employers’ Association of Metal Industries, the 10.000 square foot MEXT facility provides its visitors with a model digital factory, a training area, office spaces, a co-working area and represents an ecosystem of more than 30 globally recognized technology providers, universities, and institutions. MEXT has been established to make Türkiye the driving force of the world, to increase our trained workforce, to shed light on the future of manufacturing, and to share the world's knowledge with all sector employees.
Siemens is enabling the next generation of engineers:
Siemens Türkiye works to ensure that the next generation of Turkish designers, engineers and manufacturers have access to the most advanced portfolio of tools for digital transformation as they progress through the education systems.
The Turkish Ministry of National Education recently announced plans to provide access to Solid Edge® software for design, analysis and manufacturing will be provided free of charge to 2.410 schools affiliated to the General Directorate of Vocational and Technical Education, and, in turn, to over 2 million students and over 120.000 teachers in these schools.
This builds on Siemens’ long-established relationship with the nation’s research universities including Orta Doğu Teknik Üniversitesi (Middle East Technical University) and Özel Enka Teknik Okulları (Private Enka Technical Schools), providing over 12.000 academic licenses to date
