Daimler Truck Collaborates with Plano’s Siemens Digital Industries Software to Build Engineering Platform

"Trucks are the backbone of global supply chains and Siemens will help Daimler Truck to chart the future of carbon-neutral transportation," says Siemens' Cedrik Neike.

With an eye toward a carbon neutral future, Plano-based Siemens Digital Industries Software and Daimler Truck AG of Germany are collaborating on a state-of-the-art digital engineering platform built using the Siemens Xcelerator portfolio of software and services.

The companies said the new platform will enable Daimler Truck to explore commercial vehicle innovation and the efficient product development and lifecycle management of trucks and buses. It will be rolled out globally across Daimler Trucks’ engineering hubs, brands, and business segments, the companies said.

‘A huge step forward’

Dr. Andreas Gorbach, Member of the Board of Management of Daimler Truck Holding AG, responsible for Truck Technology (left) and Cedrik Neike, Member of the Managing Board of Siemens AG and CEO Digital Industries. [Photos: Daimler Truck AG and Siemens AG]

“Our decision to expand our relationship with Siemens is driven by the ambition to create a globally integrated IT and engineering environment for Daimler Truck. This will help us to leverage the most advanced technologies to build the future of transportation and make the business of our customers more successful,” Dr. Andreas Gorbach, member of the board of management of Daimler Truck Holding AG, said in a statement.

“A unified IT landscape will bring our engineering activities at Daimler Truck a huge step forward,” Garbach added. “With a transparent and efficient end-to-end engineering process enabled by the new development platform, we’re becoming more agile and can improve our time to market.”

The platform will expand Daimler Truck’s adoption of the Siemens Xcelerator portfolio through the implementation of Teamcenter software for Product Lifecycle Management, extended with Bill of Materials management as its future standard PLM solution.

The companies said that this environment brings together and integrates the Daimler Truck teams’ workflows, systems and their associated mechanical design, electrical design, and simulation data. It expands on Daimler Truck’s use of solutions from across the Siemens Xcelerator portfolio, including NX software for product engineering, the companies said.

A move toward sustainable transportation—and an autonomous trucking future

Once established as an independent entity, Daimler Truck said it has begun a digitalization initiative to migrate away from Daimler AG legacy systems with the strategic intent to lead sustainable transportation with intelligent IT innovations.

Daimler Truck is pursuing a technology strategy where, in a carbon-neutral future, vehicles will be powered by both electric battery and hydrogen-based drives. These vehicles are likely to become more intelligent via increased digitalization, enabling next-level service offerings such as autonomous trucking.

“Trucks are the backbone of global supply chains and Siemens will help Daimler Truck to chart the future of carbon-neutral transportation,” Cedrik Neike, member of the managing board of Siemens AG and CEO Digital Industries, said in a statement. “Daimler Truck will build its carbon-neutral future using our leading technology platform, using our leading product engineering, lifecycle management, and simulation tools.”

Daimler Truck North America is based in Portland, Oregon.

The company said it’s adopting a global platform approach, developing key components and vehicle platforms once and then scaling them globally across brands and markets.

To that end, a cloud-based global collaboration and common digital engineering system platform is essential. So Daimler Truck said it chose Siemens as the technology and implementation provider to build this next-generation engineering digital environment.

Products of the future

Daimler Truck AG is one of the world’s largest truck and bus manufacturers, with industry leading positions in Europe, North America, and Asia, and with more than 40 main locations around the globe.

With more than 100,000 employees, it unites seven brands under one roof: Freightliner, Western Star, Thomas Built Buses, Mercedes-Benz, Setra, BharatBenz and FUSO.

Siemens Digital Industries Software businesses digitally transform using software, hardware, and services from the Siemens Xcelerator business platform.

Siemens’ software and comprehensive digital twin enable companies to optimize their design, engineering, and manufacturing processes to turn today’s ideas into the sustainable products of the future—from chips to entire systems, from product to process, across all industries, the company says.

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