In the cover story for this month’s print issue of Automation World, we focus on the move to bring more manufacturing to the U.S. The article cites a recent Boston Consulting Group survey which reports that 31 percent of executives at companies with annual revenues of $1 billion and above planned to increase U.S.-based manufacturing over the next five years for goods to be sold in the U.S. Only 20 percent of companies this size said they planned to ramp up production in China for such products.
Further highlighting this move to bring more manufacturing to the U.S. is Siemens' recent announcement that it will begin assembling several of its industrial PC products in its Lebanon, Ohio, facility.
The first IPCs to be assembled in Ohio include Siemens Simatic 427D Microbox IPC and Panel IPC477D. Later this year, Siemens will add assembly of its Nanobox IPC227E, Nanopanel IPC277E, Microbox IPC427E, and Micropanel IPC477E at this facility. By the spring of 2017, the company says it also plans to bring assembly of its IPC547G Rack PC to the Ohio facility.
The IPCs to be assembled in this Siemens facility will reportedly be built following the same standards as IPCs produced in Germany. Siemens standard assembly measures for these products include conducting more than 50 tests on the IPCs, including a 36-hour burn-in test.
The models selected for assembly in the U.S. were chosen because they “represent our most popular IPC configurations in the U.S.,” says Wolfgang Rubrecht, Siemens vice president, Digital Factory, Factory Automation U.S. He adds that producing the units in the U.S. will reduce delivery lead times for U.S. customers by 40 percent.
Rubrecht adds that, by being assembled in the U.S., these IPCs will qualify for use in U.S. government contracts.
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