The Future-Ready Podcast: Industry & Beyond

Consumer products companies have some of the largest portfolios of any businesses around the world. But even with the large overlap between products, many still operate within a more permanent framework for manufacturing. Make a large lot all at once, then adjust to the next product run. This is anathema to the consumer trends many of these companies are trying to follow.

Software is helping change that. And Alastair Orchard joins us on the podcast to talk about how. From production change-overs to demand planning, let’s dive into the evolving shop floor and how it is impacting industries like consumer products.

In this episode you’ll learn about:

(00:00) Curious consumer products

(05:43) Flexibility at scale

(14:30) On demand production

(16:41) An eye on the future

About the voices:

Alastair Orchard runs Digital Enterprise Thought Leadership for Siemens Digital Industries, working with customers to become more flexible, cost effective, transparent and collaborative organizations. All while bringing their world-class products to market faster than their competitors. He is also the co-founder and CTO of dimax.cloud – a distributed manufacturing platform cutting costs, carbon and complexity from supply chains.

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

Robotics have been a staple in manufacturing for decades, allowing certain repetitive tasks to be automated yet, for as powerful as automation is, replicating full human-like abilities is difficult to achieve. By incorporating AI with advanced robotics, a new level of flexible, adaptable, robotic systems can not only take on tasks previously limited to humans, but also support rapid product iteration and development in a way never before possible.

In this episode, host Spencer Acain is joined by Christopher Schuette, Senior Product Portfolio Manager for Robotics AI at Siemens Digital Industries to examine what it takes to build production ready Industrial AI solutions capable of operating complex machines under a variety of conditions.

In the episode you’ll learn about:

(2:12) Upgrading to AI-powered robotics

(4:23) Building more dynamic robotics with AI

(9:41) Training AI for the shop floor

(12:58) Data needs for production ready AI

About the voices:

Christopher Schuette is the Senior Product Portfolio Manager for Robotics AI at Siemens Digital Industries

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

As pharmaceutical and life sciences companies work to accelerate development processes, digital technologies offer a path to greater efficiency, adaptability and speed. The Digital Twin and Industrial AI are expected to become particularly impactful.

In this episode of the Future Ready Podcast from Siemens, listen to experts on the pharmaceutical and life sciences industry dive into how digital transformation speeds development, the modeling of molecules with the Digital Twin and how AI is already influencing drug discovery.

In this episode you’ll learn about: 

(00:00) Introduction

(01:02) Digitalization in drug development

(06:38) Using the Digital Twin in tech transfers

(09:46) The Digital Twin from molecule to market

(17:02) Scaling Industrial AI across the lifecycle

About the voices: 

Maria Grahm is the Global VP of Life Sciences for Siemens. Maria is responsible for managing how Siemens applies its full portfolio, including smart infrastructure, digital industries, and software, to lead digital transformation from molecule to market.

Andy Whytock is the Head of Market Strategy and Thought Leadership of Life Sciences at Siemens. Andy is responsible for driving digital transformation initiatives and thought leadership activities in the pharmaceutical and life sciences sector and specializes in helping life sciences manufacturers embrace digital transformation, adopt cutting-edge technologies and evolve into fully connected, data-driven and sustainable enterprises.

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.

Mounting complexity, disruption and shifting customer demands are driving companies in many industries to seek faster and more efficient development methods across product and production lifecycles. Digitalization, and the Digital Twin specifically, have arisen as a means of helping companies accelerate processes, lower costs and reduce risk in an increasingly dynamic industrial environment.

In this episode of the Future Ready Podcast from Siemens, we are joined by one of our resident experts on the Digital Twin, Dominik Zettler, Vice President of Simulation for Industrial Systems at Siemens. The conversation explores the digital twin concept before examining common challenges and practical advice on how to get started on a digital transformation journey.

In this episode you’ll learn about: 

(00:00) Introduction

(02:30) Making the Digital Twin tangible

(04:30) Digital Twin in production and across the lifecycle

(06:55) Evolution of product-to-production handover

(10:04) Roadblocks to Digital Twin adoption and how to move forward

About the voices: 

Dominik Zettler is Vice President of Simulation for Industrial Systems at Siemens. Over more than 20 years in the industry, Dominik has experienced the growth of digitalization technology from early 3D modeling to the advanced digital twins in use today. Now, Zettler focuses on go-to-market strategies and the development of new business models. Zettler also has experience in project management and general contracting from prior positions, where responsibilities included managing large-scale automotive projects and P&L accountability.

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.

Pharmaceutical and Life Sciences companies are in a race against time in the development of new therapies. Pharmaceutical manufacturers must accelerate timelines while ensuring patient safety, maintaining data integrity and managing complexity across global supply networks.

In this episode of the Future Ready Podcast from Siemens, hear experts discuss the realities and shortcomings of current development methods, explore how digitalization can deliver value and examine emerging production and distribution models.

In this episode you’ll learn about: 

(00:00) Introduction

(01:40) Pressures driving timeline acceleration

(04:14) Friction in current development methods

(07:51) Collaboration and the challenge of knowledge transfer

(11:22) Precision medicine

(15:44) Supply chain readiness for faster timelines

(19:25) Distributed production models

About the voices: 

Maria Grahm is the Global VP of Life Sciences for Siemens. Maria is responsible for managing how Siemens applies its full portfolio, including smart infrastructure, digital industries, and software, to lead digital transformation from molecule to market.

Andy Whytock is the Head of Market Strategy and Thought Leadership of Life Sciences at Siemens. Andy is responsible for driving digital transformation initiatives and thought leadership activities in the pharmaceutical and life sciences sector and specializes in helping life sciences manufacturers embrace digital transformation, adopt cutting-edge technologies and evolve into fully connected, data-driven and sustainable enterprises.

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.

Automation is adapting and learning to use new tools, much like we and a handful of other creatures have, to get better faster than evolution would normally allow. Machines don’t have to chug along doing the same thing until decommissioning. Soon they’ll be changing with the demands of the industry they serve.

For the shop floor, this advantage is built on digitalization – making variability the new status quo and ensuring it remains reliable through comprehensive validation in the digital world. To talk about this evolution and the niches businesses will be able to occupy, we brought Alastair Orchard on the show.

In this episode you’ll learn about:

(00:00) Introduction

(01:13) Automation is adapting, not evolving  

(05:53) Digital twins are not mirrors

(08:03) Perfecting the last twenty percent

(13:05) Applying an in-depth understanding

About the voices:

Alastair Orchard runs Digital Enterprise Thought Leadership for Siemens Digital Industries, working with customers to become more flexible, cost effective, transparent and collaborative organizations. All while bringing their world-class products to market faster than their competitors. He is also the co-founder and CTO of dimax cloud – a distributed manufacturing platform cutting costs, carbon and complexity from supply chains.

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

AI is moving from theory to practice on the shop floor. And it is only possible because of an accelerated workflow built on software. Whether it is generative AI powered assistants, smarter data integration or efficient deployment across both greenfield and brownfield deployments, the future of industry starts with digitalization and software. And we have Rainer Brehm to explore the topic.

The flexibility of this transition, highlighted in parts one and two, extend to the how as well. Your facility can be large and stationary or remote microfactories, deployed at a moment’s notice, flexibility in a software-defined system is about understanding what works and applying it to every relevant use case as a business grows. Automation is transitioning from rule-based to goal-based, enabling systems that can adapt, optimize and execute in dynamic conditions.

In this episode you’ll learn about:

(00:00) When is this transformation happening?

(04:30)  Scaling across industries

(08:05) Rule-based to goal-based

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.

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

Connecting enterprise data is a necessary, yet challenging, step in the process of developing Industrial AI solutions to their fullest potential. Data fabrics are a key way to address this challenge, offering connection and context to enterprise data and credibility to AI-generated results. These three elements will, together, be necessary building blocks for developing highly autonomous AI agents in the future, paving the way for users to orchestrate complex workflows across multiple domains.

In this episode, host Spencer Acain is joined by Tobias Malbretcht, Head of Product Management, Data & AI at Siemens Digital Industries to explore the future role of tools like RapidMiner in supporting complex agentic AI solutions for industry and what that will mean for product design and production going forward.

In the episode you’ll learn about:

(00:00) How data fabrics are applied to agentic AI

(03:03) Building secure and trusted AI systems with data fabrics

(07:00) What the future holds for RapidMiner

About the voices:

Tobias Malbretcht is the Head of Product Management for Data and AI at Siemens Digital Industries leading development for the RapidMiner AI Platform.

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

The ChatGPT moment for robotics is here,” Nvidia boss Jensen Huang said. And nowhere is that more obvious than on the factory floor, where machines aren’t just becoming more agile, but smarter, too. Last November, Money Talks took a trip to Siemens in Germany, to tour the factories of the future.

© The Economist Newspaper Limited, London 2026

This is a special episode, first recorded by The Economist, to uncover the future of factories. Their crew interviewed a handful of guests including Cedrik Neike, Rainer Brehm and Stephan Schlauss.

Computers and software are becoming paramount to the future of industry, whether to automate automation engineering or expand the available design space for operational needs. Co-host Mark Hindsbo sat down to talk to the later and explain the transition happening in the world of production and manufacturing.

There are so many interesting topics in the realm of operations software, but to start off it’d be best to understand exactly what that encompasses as well as some of the advantages to deploying a software-first plan. Going virtual first, means more trials with fewer costs and less capital investment – just like the gains automotive companies have made with virtual crash-testing.

In this episode you’ll learn about:

(00:00) Who is Mark Hindsbo

(04:41) Integrating automation and operations

(08:58) Defining operations software

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.

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