Corporate Technology - Rolf Hellinger

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Interview demand for energy storage solutions, intelligent power grids, and new, entirely electric-powered vehicles. It’s also important to move forward with renewable energy by optimizing the electricity yields of wind parks and solar-thermal facilities, for example. We’re taking a similarly comprehensive approach with regard to industrial issues that include the modeling, planning, and automation of the entire value chain — from safety technologies to the conceptualization of energy-efficient buildings. Our research in the area of healthcare is focused on new imaging procedures, medical information systems, and intelligent knowledge management processes that bring together laboratory diagnostic results with those obtained from imaging systems and epidemiological studies. How do you bring together your worldwide expertise in all the different technological fields you’re involved in? Achatz: That’s the job of our Global Technology Fields (GTFs), which concentrate on issues that will have the biggest impact on our sector and divisional business operations. The GTFs bring together experts from diverse departments around the world, and this can include anyone from specialists for ceramics, medical imaging, energy storage, and selforganizing systems to those for oil and gas technologies, product cycle management, and new solutions geared toward emerging markets. The directors of the GTFs have global responsibility for their respective fields — regardless of whether they’re located in Princeton, Beijing, Bangalore, St. Petersburg, Munich, Berlin, or Erlangen. This setup encourages thinking beyond CT’s departmental boundaries. It also brings us closer to a system of global responsibility for specific topics that ensures incorporation of the best resources and minds in a given situation. We also participate in application-based projects with the business units, since our specialized divisions are 8 Corporate Technology CT researchers are optimizing medical imaging techniques (below) and combining traditional Chinese medicine with the latest technology. Health Care and Computers: A Healthy Combination Computers with sophisticated knowledge at their disposal will increasingly be used to support physicians with diagnoses and treatment decisions, thus ensuring faster, safer, and more efficient decision-making processes. One such application, known as syngo Auto EF (Ejection Fraction), has been on the market since 2005. Ejection fraction is a standard unit for measuring the amount of blood ejected by the heart during a contraction, as a fraction of the ventricle’s total blood volume. The traditional method for measuring this involves visually estimating or manually determining the value. It takes a human specialist around 30 seconds to do this — but syngo Auto EF can perform the calculation in just a few seconds. The software uses pattern-recognition procedures and can be trained with examples from a database of actual clinical cases. Experts at Siemens Corporate Research (SCR) in Princeton worked with colleagues from the Ultrasound Division to develop the system, which doesn’t require an exact depiction of the heart’s contour, or even perfect image quality. The system is now available in all Siemens ultrasound devices that are outfitted with cardiologic functions. It doesn’t always take completely new technology to improve health care, however. A good example of this is seen in China, where Corporate Technology has set itself the goal of combining Western and traditional Chinese medicine (TCM) in order to optimize procedures that are thousands of years old. The researchers’ first success here was in combining acupotomy with magnetic resonance tomography (MRT). Acupotomy is a specialized type of acupuncture that is used to treat movement-associated disorders such as chronic pain, slipped discs, and arthritis. The technique calls for making small cuts in muscles and tendons, with the aim of improving the patient’s bio-mechanical balance. In such cases Western medicine generally relies on painkillers and operations, some of which even involve removing parts of a disc. Acupotomy, on the other hand, is only a minor micro-surgical procedure whose effectiveness has been clinically proven. Until now, doctors who have practiced this technique have done so according to their feeling and experience. Unfortunately, this has led in some cases to blood vessels or nerves being severed or damaged. But used in conjunction with MR tomography, the procedure can support accurate navigation. State-of-the-art imaging systems can thus help to make traditional Chinese medicine safer, while increasing the likelihood that these ancient techniques can be successful in Western countries as well.
Innovation Careers: Synergy at Work CT’s 3D pattern recognition technology offers applications from facial recognition to the detection of anomalies in turbine blades and hearing aids. What do automatic face recognition, chassis calibration, turbine error analyses, and in-ear hearing aid adjustments have in common? At first glance, perhaps nothing. At Siemens, for example, these processes are the responsibilities of different Sectors, such as Industry, Energy, and Healthcare. Nevertheless, a unique new technology known as color-coded triangulation, which was developed at Corporate Technology, has significantly improved all of them. Color-coded triangulation enables precise three-dimensional object-surface data to be obtained in a cost-effective manner in real time. Computer scientist Dr. Frank Forster began developing the procedure in 2000 as part of a Siemens-commissioned doctoral dissertation that was also linked to a European research project. Forster perfected a simple principle: a pattern of light is projected onto a target object while a camera takes a picture of the object. The light pattern is deformed to a varying degree depending on the object’s surface geometry. An algorithm uses this deformation data to reconstruct the shape of the object, practically in real time and down to the last tenths of a millimeter. Forster’s pattern of hundreds of parallel color strips arranged in order can be generated using a conventional slide. A prototype of the measuring system was first used for 3D facial recognition in 2003, when demand for security technology was very strong. The system’s advantage is that 3D recognition is virtually error-proof. The exact three-dimensional shape of a face, unlike a photo, is very hard to imitate. And the procedure can be used in other areas — without need for major adjustments. Thanks to their close ties to customers, CT researchers were able to quickly apply the technique to exactly the kinds of solutions their customers were looking for. For instance, the Industry Sector applied Forster’s procedure to chassis calibration in vehicle assembly. Here, the chassis’ spinning wheels are illuminated by a color pattern and then measured. The development team had to fine tune the system to precisely determine the wheels’ properties and optimize the measuring station’s dimensions. In another application, the measurement device’s size had to be reduced to fit it into a small 3D scanner — the “Siemens iScan” now used in hearing aid applications. This scanner makes it possible to digitize auditory canal imprints, which are often made of silicon, and then e-mail the data to a hearing aid manufacturer. The procedure is even used by the Energy Sector to compare the shape of turbine blades with 3D data from a database, and quickly identify even the smallest cracks or imperfections. Color-coded triangulation is also used outside of Siemens, for example as the basis for software used by plastic surgeons to precisely plan operations and visualize the results beforehand. ultimately responsible for the accumulation of expertise in areas such as materials, software, and production processes. How important is it that research at Siemens takes place around the world? Achatz: It’s extremely important. Being close to customers and knowing their requirements is just as crucial to industrial researchers as the contacts they maintain with top universities and research institutes. An international structure enables us to stay in tune with the times, obtain the best people for our teams, and integrate various cultures and research approaches into the organization. Through our Centers for Knowledge Interchange we maintain very close ties with several universities, including Munich Technical University, RWTH Aachen, Tsinghua University in Beijing, Tongji University in Shanghai, M.I.T. in Boston, and the University of California in Berkeley (see p. 40). What makes research at Siemens appealing to job applicants? Achatz: Many university graduates — and especially those in the technical and natural sciences — see Corporate Technology as an ideal gateway into the world of Siemens. For one thing, it offers fascinating research opportunities across a broad range of technological fields. What’s more, none of this involves research for its own sake; everything is clearly targeted toward some aspect of business. At CT, researchers can experience, and help shape, the process by which an idea is transformed into a new product used worldwide. After a couple of years, these young researchers can — and should — transfer into one of our Divisions to take on new and exciting assignments, whether in development, production, sales, strategy, or service. In other words, Siemens offers all researchers with an entrepreneurial spirit an unbelievable variety of possibilities — all over the world. Corporate Technology 9
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Page 5 and 6: St. Petersburg Moscow Berlin Erlang
Page 7: Whether simulating turbines (right
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Page 13 and 14: every second. This delivers X-ray i
Page 15 and 16: After a solution has been successfu
Page 17 and 18: area, which is approximately 25 tim
Page 19 and 20: concept are obvious: costs would be
Page 21 and 22: As the average age of the populatio
Page 23 and 24: SCR is a leader in the development
Page 25 and 26: In fast-growing economies such as C
Page 27 and 28: A major initiative at Corporate Tec
Page 29 and 30: field of chemical-thermal gas dynam
Page 31 and 32: In another successful project, Roke
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Page 35 and 36: was realized by Siemens’ Industry
Page 37 and 38: to constantly changing conditions,
Page 39 and 40: Partnerships with leading internati
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Page 43 and 44: One example of how Siemens is embar
Page 45 and 46: as several public research organiza
Page 47 and 48: Maximilian Fleischer Sensor expert
Page 49 and 50: Sebnem Rusitschka Peer-to-peer tech
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Page 53 and 54: of all of this is to improve the pr
Page 55 and 56: Siemens holds more than 55,000 pate
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Siegfied Söllner Söllner’s art
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Universal standards are a major ben
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Siemens’ environmental portfolio
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Open Innovation throughout the Comp
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Jobs at Corporate Technology Siemen
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Corporate Technology - Rolf Hellinger

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