Siemens Energy Promotes Innovation and Process Efficiency with 200+ Low-Code Apps

Energy providers are being pushed to their limits, serving growing populations while also promoting a more sustainable future. In this rapidly evolving industry, Siemens Energy provides technology – from circuit breakers to turbines – that powers sixteen percent of the world’s electricity generation.

On their mission to make energy systems more reliable, affordable, and sustainable, Siemens Energy must also ensure that their internal processes are as efficient as possible. Delivering software more quickly is key in this transformation.

Siemens Energy adopted the Mendix low-code development platform and has delivered over 200 applications that are replacing legacy systems, reducing manual work, and improving data quality. Their solutions touch nearly every business area, from finance to manufacturing, and have generated millions of euros in added value for the organization.

A Platform for Rapid Innovation

During a challenging development proof of concept in 2018, Siemens AG – former parent company to Siemens Energy – acquired Mendix. This prompted Siemens Energy to reevaluate their previous low-code platform of choice.

Mendix met Siemens Energy’s requirements for a new development platform:

• Being easy for both business and technical users to understand.
• Able to handle use cases of varying complexity, from simpler Excel replacements all the way to complex workflows.
• Offering a fully-managed development environment that could also work within their private cloud and security parameters.

“This was one of the main reasons we chose Mendix. People with limited knowledge from a technical perspective didn’t have to do a lot to understand our architecture,” said Mendix Platform Manager, Vivek Gautam.

Their first proof of concept with Mendix was rebuilding a logistics application to track the packing, shipment, and arrival of goods sent to customers. The first version of the new Mendix application was delivered in just one month and deemed a success.

Low-Code Change Management

In 2020, Siemens Energy spun out from Siemens AG as an independent company, prompting an increased focus on Mendix to:

• Support with separating their infrastructure from Siemens AG.
• Help consolidate their tech stack and phase out legacy systems.
• Upskill their workforce and empower business technologists to contribute to digitalization projects without IT intervention.

“We had strategic plans and identified areas where we could further leverage Mendix. In order to do so, we needed to increase our adoption and awareness of Mendix within the organization,” said Ashish Goel, Siemens Energy’s Head of Cross-Functional IT Platforms.

The team has employed a mix of internal strategies  to drive awareness such as:

• Hosting regular community calls where team members can share about application successes and challenges.
• Running workshops like “Build an App in 2 Hours” or week-long hackathons that combine training and hands-on development.
• Doing departmental roadshows to get feedback from the business and uncover new use cases.
• Conducting value assessments to demonstrate how applications will contribute to business growth over time.

R&D engineer and low-code lead for the large power transformers factory cluster, Franz Klammler, has even taken things a step further in Europe by establishing a “guided citizen development” program.

The program offers documentation, best practices, and guidelines on creating standard and secure application for business technologists. Furthermore, it provides several mechanisms for continued learning and support.

Anurag Ajmera, an Engineering Lead with a background in Java development, was “surprised” when he first was introduced to the platform. “Especially when it comes to small or mid-size applications – things could be built literally within days – which was a welcomed surprise,” Ajmera shared.

Mendix Across the Value Chain

As Siemens Energy’s low-code practice has matured, so has the complexity and scale of their work.

“Most of our early applications were for automating or digitalizing Excel spreadsheets or forms. Eventually we did see a lot of applications created using Mendix Workflow,” said Ajmera.

“Within one year we were able to replace an older platform and move a lot of super complex workflow applications, which made us feel content that we could create highly-complex enterprise-level applications,” he said.

The Siemens Energy portfolio of applications is broken down into two categories:

• Small to medium applications that are developed by business technologists – or citizen developers – using the standards put in place by the COE, with minimal or no IT intervention.
• Professionally managed medium to large-scale applications delivered by the COE team that are often used globally and by thousands of users.

Today the Siemens Energy team has successfully delivered over 200 Mendix applications touching nearly every area of their business. Some of the team’s favorite applications thus far include:

• Smart Tooling, an app rolled out globally for customers to report any issues with products that may arrived damaged or needing repair. Users can upload images of the product and request a replacement, allowing them to get the new equipment as fast as possible.
• ORCA, an application with 8,000 users that supports with finance and accounting processes.
• Qualifit, a competency management tool where employees can add their skills and experience. As jobs are posted the application can match internal employees to job opportunities within the organization, supporting with HR’s strategy around upskilling their current workforce.
• INS, an application developed by a shop floor team member that digitizes the process of requesting material cutting and product delivery between departments.
• Material Management, an app used to request new material masters with a ticketing system that is integrated with SAP.

“I think there is a very high potential in our logistics warehouses,” said Digital Transformation Manager, Reto Bleuler. “We have many site processes that are not being covered by SAP, and usually people will start creating manual processes with Excel spreadsheets and emails.”

Mendix applications within Siemens Energy are almost never standalone projects. They will typically interact with a range of tools such as PowerBI, Tableau, SAP ERP, Salesforce, Teamcenter, UIPath, OpenAI, AWS, and Snowflake.

Nearly every Mendix project that touches a factory process will interact with Snowflake.

“One of the bigger projects we did was replacing an older Access database,” said Klammler, who originally created his own Snowflake connector before one was made universally available by Mendix.

“We now have a Mendix application with several modules that track the progress of the manufacturing and takes quality measurements. We call this a ‘hub’ application where we bring together several use cases into one app. It makes the architecture clearer, and you only have to sync once to Snowflake,” he continued.

Harnessing Generative AI

“We have a huge push around generative AI in Siemens Energy,” said Gautam.

The team has several experimental projects in play, such as using OpenAI to ingest documents and create contract clauses for procurement and legal team members and creating chatbots to guide users through databases.

Other projects that are already being used more broadly include:

• A Chat UI for employees to ask questions and find information that has already amassed 30,000 users (with 2,000 concurrent users during business hours).
• “Walk and Talk,” an app that replaces a paper-based checklist process and uses generative AI to describe a picture in the context of checklist questions, making the photos searchable by text instead of only discoverable by image.
• An application that allows team members to upload photos of machines or parts that are broken or have a defect within the factories. The app then serves up the appropriate checklist and safety suggestions.

“We have a training program being run by the generative AI community where we are enabling people to learn what to do and what not to do. Generative AI is a very powerful tool, and we want people to be enabled to use it in the right way,” Gautam said.

Governance Practices at Scale

By democratizing development and creating a robust community of citizen developers, the central Mendix team has guardrails in place to ensure that the right apps are being created the right way. This includes:

• Having a defined “decision tree” of when to use Mendix vs. another platform or development option.
• Requiring that anyone who develops an application – whether they are a citizen or professional developer – assesses the value of what they plan to develop.
• Promoting the reuse of standard components and modules that are professionally supported and maintained by the COE team.
• Implementing a common set of data usage rules as defined by the Siemens Energy cybersecurity team.
• Regularly evaluating application use on a quarterly basis to phase out applications that are no longer being used.

When looking at potential use cases, the team will first see if an existing system is a good fit. For example, if someone is looking for a simple dashboard, they will point them to Tableau.

Bleuler has also pioneered establishing the first Mendix App Factory within Siemens Energy’s Gas Service business unit. The App Factory approach provides another layer of departmental support when business-created applications reach a certain level of complexity.

“We’ve established this App Factory process as a blueprint and want to copy it in other areas of the organization,” he said. “It made sense to establish an organization who can manage an application in case someone leaves the team, or so that you can ensure that applications are best maintained long-term.”

A Sustainable Digital Future

The Siemens Energy team has estimated millions of euros in value from leveraging Mendix thus far through new value creation, cost avoidance, and increased productivity.

“From a qualitative standpoint we’ve also seen an improvement in the quality of our user experiences and better maintenance of our data,” said Ajmera.

Empowering business technologists has been a highlight for the COE team, who have seen applications start with only a few users and one department grow to be adopted across multiple factories or countries.

“When I look back two or three years ago, we started from a user base of 4,000 and now have 40,000 people using Mendix applications. The number of applications, and the improvements we’ve made, all of these things make me proud,” said Goel.