Industries often take energy for granted. Operators flip a switch, or fill a tank, and everything runs as expected. Recent global events prove the harsh reality: energy prices and availability can change quickly putting whole sectors at risk. Experts argue, however, that automation, digitalization and green technologies can secure energy supply chains.

In this podcast, Christian Gueckel, Head of Verticals for Chemicals and Energy at Siemens Digital Industry and Bernd Kalusche, Director of Vertical Management for Chemicals and Energy at Siemens Digital Industries discuss how modernizing the energy sector, and going green, affects access to affordable power, electricity and fuels.

In this podcast you will learn:

(01:09) – How energy security and supply chains are affected by diversification

(04:07) – What tools, chemistry and infrastructure secure energy supply chains

(09:08) – How automation and digitalization secure energy supply chains

Christian Gueckel – Head of Verticals Chemicals and Energy at Siemens Digital Industries

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Bernd Kalusche – Director Vertical Management Chemicals and Energy at Siemens Digital Industries

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Consumer Packaged Goods (CPG) companies are managing greatly increased complexity, changing demands and broadening product portfolios. At the same time, CPG companies cannot easily increase global footprints, driving them to do more with the same assets.

The Digital Twin and digital transformation offer a path forward, as demonstrated by the early success of PepsiCo’s digital transformation. In this episode we continue with our discussion with Ali Peyrovi and Steve Hoinka of PepsiCo and Stuart McCutcheon of Siemens to dive into new capabilities that a Digital Twin has unlocked and how its fueling a new mindset for future growth.

In This Episode:

(00:12) Welcome and building new manufacturing concepts with the Digital Twin

(04:08) How the Digital Twin and industrial AI improve decision making

(07:36) How to keep momentum when scaling a digital transformation program

(11:30) Key takeaway: Think big, start small, go fast and deliver value quickly

About the voices:

Steven Hoinka is Vice President of Global Manufacturing Strategy and Transformation at PepsiCo

Ali Peyrovi is Vice President of Global Warehouse Strategy and Transformation at PepsiCo

Stuart McCutcheon is Global Vice President for the Industrial Metaverse, Digital Twin and NPDI at Siemens Digital Industries Software

Conor Peick is a Marketing Professional creating forward-looking content for the Thought Leadership team at Siemens Digital Industries Software

Consumer Packaged Goods (CPG) companies face a future of increasing customer demands, expanding global product and production portfolios and other challenges. Many companies are managing increasing complexity as they add new products or new variants to address rising consumer demands for health-focused products and to cater to regional preferences in developing markets. At the same time, global volatility and disruptions threaten increasingly distributed supply chains.

Faced with the same challenges, PepsiCo has embarked on an ambitious digital transformation, converting select manufacturing and warehouse sites into high-fidelity 3D Digital Twin models that simulate plant operations and the end-to-end supply chain. In this episode of the Future Ready Podcast, you will hear from three of the experts leading this transformation to talk more about the technology, the pain points and future possibilities.

In this episode:

(00:12) Welcome and introduction

(03:57) Breaking down data barriers

(06:26) The value of real-time data and how AI supports orchestration

(09:58) How the Digital Twin supports new product introductions

About the voices:

Steven Hoinka is Vice President of Global Manufacturing Strategy and Transformation at PepsiCo

Ali Peyrovi is Vice President of Global Warehouse Strategy and Transformation at PepsiCo

Stuart McCutcheon is Global Vice President for the Industrial Metaverse, Digital Twin and NPDI at Siemens Digital Industries Software

Conor Peick is a Marketing Professional creating forward-looking content for the Thought Leadership team at Siemens Digital Industries Software

The energy transition from petroleum-based power to greener, electrified options is becoming a reality. But as many green energy systems are dependent on a vast number of variables (from the weather to a given location’s energy demands) it is difficult to manually optimize such an ecosystem.

In this podcast, Christian Gueckel, Head of Verticals Chemicals and Energy at Siemens Digital Industry will discuss how an energy platform can optimally run an energy ecosystem. He will then argue that to maximize the potential of the ecosystem, the platform must be open and AI enabled.

In this podcast you will learn:

(00:39) – What energy platforms are in relation to energy ecosystems

(06:42) – The importance of making an energy platform open

(12:01) – What role AI will play in the open energy platform

Conor Peick – Moderator

Conor Peick is a Marketing Professional helping to create forward-looking content for the Thought Leadership team at Siemens Digital Industries Software. Conor collaborates with seasoned industry experts and executives to produce podcasts, articles, blogs, and other forms of content focused on the trends and challenges companies face in the future, and the technologies that may provide solutions.

Connect with Conor on LinkedIn

Christian Gueckel – Head of Verticals Chemicals and Energy at Siemens Digital Industries

Christian Gueckel is the Head of Vertical Chemicals and Energy at Siemens Digital Industries. In this role, he is responsible for sales operations within the vertical.

Prior to joining Siemens, Gueckel spent more than ten years at the specialty chemicals company Clariant in various management positions, including Head of Strategy and Marketing. He also earned his PhD in inorganic chemistry from the Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich.

Connect with Christian on LinkedIn

The world’s energy ecosystem is heading towards a transition. Environmental realities, supply chain pressures, public opinion and growing regulations are shifting the industry away from petroleum to greener power sources. But understanding what this ecosystem will look like, and how to prepare, can be a challenge.

In this podcast, Christian Gueckel, Head of Verticals Chemicals and Energy at Siemens Digital Industry will discuss industry’s vision of a green energy ecosystem. Along the way he will discuss everything from green electrons to energy carriers like green hydrogen.

In this podcast you will learn about:

(00:30) – The big shifts in the energy industry

(05:56) – How new and existing technologies will support the transitions

(12:08) – What needs to happen for there to be a secure supply chain for energy

Conor Peick – Moderator

Conor Peick is a Marketing Professional helping to create forward-looking content for the Thought Leadership team at Siemens Digital Industries Software. Conor collaborates with seasoned industry experts and executives to produce podcasts, articles, blogs, and other forms of content focused on the trends and challenges companies face in the future, and the technologies that may provide solutions.

Connect with Conor on LinkedIn

Christian Gueckel – Head of Verticals Chemicals and Energy at Siemens Digital Industries

Christian Gueckel is the Head of Vertical Chemicals and Energy at Siemens Digital Industries. In this role, he is responsible for sales operations within the vertical.

Prior to joining Siemens, Gueckel spent more than ten years at the specialty chemicals company Clariant in various management positions, including Head of Strategy and Marketing. He also earned his PhD in inorganic chemistry from the Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich.

Connect with Christian on LinkedIn

How can manufacturers create value with Industrial AI? What does it take to move towards an AI-powered autonomous production? In this episode of the Future Ready Podcast, Spencer Acain and Dr. Matthias Loskyll explore how Siemens is bringing AI capabilities from predictive, generative, and physical AI into real industrial environments to solve the challenges of modern manufacturing.

They also explore the role of AI in quality inspection, process optimization, predictive maintenance, and engineering automation while sharing practical insights on where companies can start today to gain a competitive advantage for tomorrow.

In this episode you'll learn about:

(00:09) Matthias' background in industrial AI and manufacturing

(02:20) Understanding industrial AI and why it's different from consumer AI

(04:14) How to create industrial value with AI products

(09:27) How Siemens differentiates from hyperscalers

(12:50) Generative AI, process optimization, and predictive maintenance solutions

About the voices:

Matthias Loskyll is the Senior Director of AI and Robotics at Simens Digital Industries with a PhD in Production Automation.

Spencer Acain is a technical marketing writer for AI and verticals thought leadership at Siemens Digital Industries with a background in Applied Mathematics and Mechanical Engineering.

The process industries may be in flux, but the changes needed to make their future a reality are not built on changing everything at once. Architectures will change, but as smaller evolutions, not a monolithic revolution. That starts with finding ways to modularize and standardize processes before moving into software-defined automation that can leverage the portability and reusability of a cohesive architecture.

To talk about this and more, we brought back Rebecca Vangenechten to talk with Mark Hindsbo for another episode of Siemens’ Future Ready Podcast.

In this episode you’ll learn about:

(00:00) Introduction

(03:23) Evolving existing facilities

(07:54) Pitfalls of inaction

(11:22) Software as connective tissue

About the voices:

Mark Hindsbo joined Siemens in 2025 as Head of Operations Software. He is leading a team to build an integrated and modular industrial operations software suite that allows customers to design, engineer, and operate their factories, data centers, or plants – powered by agentic AI and digital twins. His extensive career includes leadership roles at Ansys, Parallels, and Microsoft, alongside experiences at The Boston Consulting Group, Novo Nordisk, and CERN. Mark is also an Adjunct Professor at Carnegie Mellon University. Born and educated in Denmark, he holds an M.S. in Applied Physics & Mathematics from the Technical University of Denmark.

Rebecca Vangenechten has been the Head of Automation and Engineering for Process Automation at Siemens since 2023 – helping customers and partners through the entire plant lifecycle with engineering, consulting and modernization. But her background in Biomedical Sciences and Endocrinology is perfect for understanding the challenges of process industries.

Nick Finberg is a technical marketing writer for Software-Defined Everything, with a background in Nuclear Engineering. He has worked with experts on many industries and topics including Automotive, Battery, sustainability, and systems engineering.

In this episode, host Conor Peick is joined by Katharina Westrich, Global VP of Electronics and Semiconductors at Siemens, to talk about the world of electronics and semiconductors and how it is changing amid the artificial intelligence transformation in industry.

In the episode you’ll learn about:

(00:20) Katharina’s journey to working in the electronics and semiconductor industry

(03:14) What’s changing most dramatically in the industry now and in the near future

(06:01) Other trends flying under the radar

(09:11) The challenge of talent scarcity

(10:13) More details on how AI is impacting the semiconductor industry

About the voices:

Katharina Westrich is Global VP of Electronics and Semiconductors at Siemens. In this role Katharina heads a team focused on unlocking the potential of resilient, smart, and sustainable semiconductor and electronics manufacturing across the entire value chain.

Conor Peick is a Marketing Professional creating forward-looking content for the Thought Leadership team at Siemens Digital Industries Software. Conor collaborates with industry experts and executives to produce impactful content exploring the challenges companies face and the technologies that can provide solutions.

The focus of Industrial AI is shifting to systematic implementations across tools and workflows in engineering, manufacturing, operations and more. For Siemens, that means building AI capabilities around three clear pillars and delivering measurable results at each layer.

In this episode of the Future Ready Podcast, host Spencer Acain is joined again by Samir Desai, Senior Director for AI and Data Strategy at Siemens Digital Industries Software. Samir and Spencer explore how Siemens is putting its industrial AI strategy into practice, from dramatically accelerating simulation and verification workflows to embedding copilots and agents directly into engineering tools, and finally to connecting data across disparate enterprise systems for faster, more confident decision-making.

In this episode you will learn:

(00:53) How AI is accelerating simulation and verification workflows

(06:39) The distinction between copilots, domain agents, digital thread agents, and in-app AI and how they are helping engineers work faster and more effectively

(15:39) The importance of human-in-the-loop design for AI agents in mission-critical industrial environments

(17:14) Why connected data is critical for industrial AI and how modern solutions orchestrate across PLM, MES, ERP, and CRM systems

(22:45) Intelligence Center X and the vision for a fully contextualized, AI-powered data environment

About the voices:

Samir Desai is the Senior Director and Global Program Head for Data and AI at Siemens Digital Industries Software with more than 30 years of experience developing and managing industrial software suites.

Spencer Acain is a technical marketing writer for AI and verticals thought leadership at Siemens Digital Industries with a background in Applied Mathematics and Mechanical Engineering.

How can manufacturers create value with Industrial AI? What does it take to move towards an AI-powered autonomous production? In this episode of the Future Ready Podcast, Rainer Brehm and David Humphrey return for a third episode how software-defined automation is enabling these exact kinds of solutions.

They also explore the role of AI agents, data fabrics and physical AI in the future of industry while sharing practical insights on where companies can start today. And gain a competitive advantage for tomorrow.

In this episode you’ll learn about:

(00:00) Shifting industrial expenditures

(04:24) Creating value from investment

(07:03) Solving the data challenge

(10:23) From rule-based to goal-based automation

(15:13) Humans, autonomy and what’s next

About the voices:

Rainer Brehm is the Chief Operations Officer (COO) for the automation business and Chief Technology Officer (CTO) at Siemens Digital Industries. In these roles, he drives the strategic advancement of Siemens’ automation portfolio and leads the development of technologies such as Industrial AI and Software-Defined Automation to unlock the full potential of automation. His focus is on making production more adaptive, resilient, and sustainable. His vision is an automated automation that solves unknown tasks independently.

David Humphrey is an analyst at ARC Europe. And is a member of ARC’s hybrid manufacturing, packaging and industrial networking teams. He has over 25 years experience in industrial automation across specification, design and programming in a variety of industries.

Conor Peick is a Marketing Professional creating forward-looking content for the Thought Leadership team at Siemens Digital Industries Software. Conor collaborates with industry experts and executives to produce impactful content exploring the challenges companies face and the technologies that can provide solutions.