Daimler Truck and Siemens to build integrated digital engineering platform

Siemens Digital Industries Software and Daimler Truck AG have announced a new collaboration to implement a state-of-the-art digital engineering platform.

The new platform is to be built using the Siemens Xcelerator portfolio of software and services, which will enable Daimler Truck to explore a future of commercial vehicle innovation and the efficient product development and lifecycle management of trucks and buses. The new platform will be rolled out globally across Daimler Trucks’ engineering hubs, brands and business segments.

“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,” said Dr. Andreas Gorbach, Member of the Board of Management of Daimler Truck Holding AG, responsible for Truck Technology. “A unified IT landscape, will bring our engineering activities at Daimler Truck a huge step forward. With a transparent and efficient end-to-end engineering process enabled by the new development platform, we are becoming more agile and can improve our time to market.”

The new digital platform will expand Daimler Truck’s adoption of the Siemens Xcelerator portfolio through the implementation of Teamcenter® software for Product Lifecycle Management (PLM), extended with Bill of Material (BOM) management as its future standard PLM solution. This environment brings together and integrates the Daimler Truck teams’ workflows, systems and their associated mechanical design, electrical design and simulation data. This expands upon Daimler Truck’s use of solutions from across the Siemens Xcelerator portfolio, including NX™ software for product engineering.

Pushing the digital envelope

Since its establishment as an independent entity, Daimler Truck has begun a digitalisation initiative to migrate away from Daimler AG legacy systems with the strategic intent of leading sustainable transportation with intelligent IT innovations. To develop the trucks and buses of the future, Daimler Truck is pursuing a clear technology strategy where, in a carbon-neutral future, vehicles will be powered by both electric battery and hydrogen-based drives. These vehicles are also likely to become more intelligent through increased digitalisation 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”, said Cedrik Neike, Member of the Managing Board of Siemens AG and CEO Digital Industries. “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 states that it is taking a global platform approach to development, which means that the guiding principle of developing key components and vehicle platforms once and then scaling them globally across brands and markets is fundamental. To enable this, a cloud-based global collaboration and common digital engineering system platform is essential, which is why Daimler Truck chose Siemens as the technology and implementation provider to build this next-generation engineering digital environment.