Virtual inspections optimize carbon footprint: Siemens Energy uses Microsoft Teams to simplify acceptance testing for its energy solutions

In 1867, Werner von Siemens discovered the dynamo-electric principle, setting things in motion that would make Siemens Energy one of the world’s most important suppliers of energy solutions. One-sixth of global power production is based on this company’s technology. In the past, Siemens Energy customers would travel thousands of kilometers to inspect and approve the solutions they ordered before initiating the complex process of shipping them. Today, Siemens Energy uses Microsoft Teams and HoloLens 2 to create virtual test beds that make these long journeys superfluous. This saves money and reduces the carbon footprint of the company and its customers.

The challenge: Long journeys and complex inspection processes

Whether the focus is on generating, transporting, or storing power, Siemens Energy’s claim “We energize society” is an accurate representation of the work its roughly 92,000 employees perform every day in more than 90 countries. This is because the company tailors its energy solutions to the precise requirements of its customers all over the world. Siemens Energy’s transformer plant in Nuremberg, Germany, is no exception. This location produces custom high-voltage transformers, for instance for the SuedLink wind power transmission corridor—Germany’s largest grid expansion project. To ensure that the solutions meet the requirements exactly, the customers inspect them prior to delivery together with Siemens Energy’s own test bed technicians. Only when everyone is satisfied attention turns to the complex transport process: after all, the largest of transformers measure 37 meters in length, 12 meters in width, 14 meters in height, and weigh up to 950 metric tons.

“This upstream process is known as a customer acceptance test,” explains Johannes Geidl, Chief Test Bed Technician at Siemens Energy in Nuremberg. Every year, up to 120 customer delegations would come to Nuremberg from all over the world to inspect the transformers on the test bed, take part in on-site tests, and discuss the results. Each inspection would run 24/7 for a full week.

“A single customer acceptance visit for a four-person delegation from China translated into approximately 13 metric tons of CO₂ emissions. Then there were the high travel costs,” says Carsten Niggeschulze, Global Head of Collaboration & Voice IT Services at Siemens Energy. “Finding a suitable time for a large customer group to visit, planning the trip, procuring visas—we’d put a lot of effort into organizing all this, and so would the customer.” But there was simply no option other than to have the customer there in person. Siemens Energy wanted to find a sustainable way of improving this process for its customers.

What set the seal on redesigning the process were the restricted travel options resulting from the COVID-19 health crisis: to simplify the acceptance procedure for transformer orders and to save time and money, Siemens Energy digitized the customer acceptance tests at its transformer plant in Nuremberg with the help of Microsoft Teams.

The solution: All inspection information in a single Teams Room

What used to necessitate a long journey can now be achieved via a simple dial-in link: customers log in to a Teams meeting and Siemens Energy carries out all acceptance tests with them remotely. “We transfer all the data from the test bed measurement computers in real time via hardware certified for Teams from Yealink,” says Stefan Himmer, Test Bed Team Leader at Siemens Energy. While the tiles on a normal Teams call show the other participants, at Siemens Energy they show the various measurement technicians, the transformers, and all the readings from the performance test units connected directly to each transformer.

Moreover, the technicians working at the test bed are equipped with HoloLens 2 devices—and the visual and audio data they generate is also streamed live in Microsoft Teams Rooms: in this virtual space, the customers can see and hear precisely what the technicians can as they inspect the transformers on the test bed.

“Microsoft Teams makes long journeys for acceptance testing superfluous: our customers, for instance in China, can simply dial in and see everything they would have seen had they traveled all the way to Nuremberg.”

Carsten Niggeschulze, Global Head of Collaboration & Voice IT Services, Siemens Energy

This makes long journeys superfluous. Customers save time and money while also reducing their carbon footprint. “The virtual customer acceptance process is a new service with real added value,” Niggeschulze says. “I can get people into the test environment faster now that all I have to do is call them on Teams or invite them to a Teams room,” Geidl says. “In the past, we’d collect the visiting delegations, prep them for the test beds, and give them a safety briefing—there’s no getting around the fact that the transformers carry a charge of up to 1,100,000 volts. Customers would look over our shoulder in the test environment, walking from one measurement station to the next. Then we would go somewhere else to discuss the results. Today, all this happens in one go on a single big screen: measurements, inspections, and discussions. That means the whole process now runs considerably faster. We’ve fully virtualized the test beds for our customers.”

Virtual customer acceptance testing turned out to work so well that when travel restrictions were lifted again, it was clear to everyone that they would continue with the new process. Today, it is an ideal complement to the in-person customer acceptance tests still carried out at the Nuremberg site. And in the future, Siemens Energy plans to further expand the solution by equipping the test beds with a variety of cameras to film the transformers from every angle and relay the footage to the Teams Rooms. This will make it far easier to perform even complex inspections, such as of the top of a transformer.

Siemens Energy is a trademark licensed by Siemens AG.

“With Microsoft Teams Rooms, it’s no longer essential that customers travel to our transformer plant for acceptance testing. In this way, our innovative application of standard IT solutions supports our internal and external customers while also reducing the travel-related CO2 emissions and costs.”

Carsten Niggeschulze, Global Head of Collaboration & Voice IT Services, Siemens Energy