“My Time at RWTH Never Really Came to an End.”

Dr. Annika Hauptvogel is Head of Technology & Innovation Management at Siemens AG. It’s a job with a lot of responsibility and it is one that is geared to the future, because Annika Hauptvogel is the innovation trailblazer at Siemens. This means that she identifies current technological trends, develops them for Siemens and ensures that they are also successful on the market, all whilst keeping sustainability in mind. She studied Mechanical Engineering at the Technical University of Munich and she completed her doctorate at the Laboratory for Machine Tools and Production Engineering (WZL) at RWTH from 2011 to 2015. Annika Hauptvogel passed her doctorate with distinction and she was awarded the Borchers Plaque.

In an interview with “keep in touch”, she talks about her many years of collaboration with RWTH Aachen University, the Industrial Metaverse and her time at the WZL, which she still looks back on fondly today.

Ms. Hauptvogel, you are Head of Technology & Innovation Management at Siemens. That's quite a long job title. What exactly does your job consist of?

Yes, it really is a long job title and it is also a broad area of responsibility! Basically, you could say that I ensure that Siemens is always able to innovate. My aim is to get new digital and sustainable technologies off the ground.

That means: We look at what the technology trends of the future are and which trends are relevant for Siemens. We then work on these. At Siemens, we have what are called Company Core Technologies (specific research and development fields). This program serves to drive forward the technologies that are relevant to Siemens. We also ensure that these technologies are successful on the market and that they can be transferred there by guaranteeing market access at an early stage – for example through technical regulations – and by creating innovation ecosystems.

Does a typical working day at your company also include visits to laboratories?

In my team, we are not the researchers or developers, rather we are the strategists, consultants, and program managers. For example, we do a lot of work with ecosystems. Identifying technology trends is not something that you do just sitting at your desk, you have to go to conferences, trade fairs, think tanks, and you have to understand the business and the market. We are also in contact with other companies, associations, and politicians, for example to discuss the influence and possibilities that new technologies present us with.

How important are international relationships for your work?

Very important. Siemens is a global company and it is therefore active all over the world.

Siemens wants to bring together the greatest minds available; this means that we need those people who possess specialist expertise. This is something that we do regularly. For example, we have the Tech for Sustainability campaign. We specifically ask students and start-ups for their solutions to certain topics and challenges. These questions come directly from our Siemens branches. This ensures that the solutions are relevant and that they have the potential to be developed into a marketable product.

You developed an app together with RWTH Aachen University, the Track Monitoring Smartphone App. What exactly is this app?

That was during my time at Siemens Mobility. We asked ourselves how we could develop a simple solution to allow rail operators to monitor their tracks. The track is the most important infrastructure element for rail operators and we were looking for a cheap and simple solution at the time. At that time, track monitoring was carried out by simply walking along the tracks. Measuring trains were also used, but these are so hard to find that they only monitor most track sections once a year.

As part of digitalization, you naturally want to receive data regularly and we thought that this would work well with a smartphone app. Because the smartphone itself is like a measuring instrument. It has integrated sensors that can, for example, measure acceleration or record the direction in which you are facing. So the question then was: How can I evaluate parameters recorded by a smartphone in the driver's cab of a train, for example, and then obtain information about the track? RWTH turned out to be a great help here! RWTH supplied precisely the model that we needed at the time in order to be able to evaluate the sensors and the data. It was a great project and a good example of a functioning ecosystem in which the fields of university and industry developed a product together with the customer – which in this case was the Frankfurt am Main transport association.

In other words, your time at RWTH was not over after you finished your doctorate. To what extent are you still connected to RWTH at Siemens?

Exactly, my time at RWTH never really came to an end. While I was working at Siemens Mobility, for example, there was the Future Train 2025+ project. This was a Siemens research group that we set up together with RWTH in order to consider what the next but one generation of trains could look like. I was involved in the project to ensure that the concept also made efficient maintenance possible.

Basically, Siemens has the Siemens Research and Innovation Ecosystems mentioned earlier – and one of them is the Siemens RIE Aachen Arc. We believe that we should and must operate in ecosystems, especially today. RWTH or the Fraunhofer-Gesellschaft or the KU Leuven are very good and trustworthy partners. On December 6, for example, we will meet up to talk about the Industrial Metaverse in this ecosystem. Our Siemens Research and Innovation Ecosystems are very relevant vehicles for us to bring together a wide variety of stakeholders. It is particularly important to combine the scientific, university perspective with industrial, real-life issues and challenges. In this way, we can learn from each other and ensure the transfer from research to industry goes smoothly.

I would like to inspire people for technology and also for Siemens. That's why I also attend events such as the Aachen Machine Tool Colloquium (AWK) and show what we at Siemens are driving forward in the context of sustainability and what current developments we are working on.

Dr. Annika Hauptvogel during her presentation at the AWK'23.

What exactly is December 6 about?

The theme of the conference is the Industrial Metaverse. “Simulation and Digital Twin Technologies in the Industrial Metaverse” is the name of the entire event. The metaverse consists not only of digital twin technology, but also includes AI [artificial intelligence] and simulation. In the conference on December 6 and 7, we will discuss with experts from research and industry what impact the Industrial Metaverse and its associated technologies will have on joint future collaborations and its general impact on industry, society and sustainability. On the second day of the conference at KU Leuven, we will deepen the discussion in workshops with professors from RWTH, KU Leuven, TU Eindhoven, and various industry representatives from the region. The aim is to identify open challenges of simulations and the digital twin in industrial applications and then to tackle them together with research.

Incidentally, we will also be celebrating the 20th anniversary of the cooperation between Siemens and RWTH Aachen University at the Industrial Metaverse conference. We can look back on the success of many joint projects.

You have already mentioned some of the advantages of the cooperation between Siemens and RWTH, for example the transfer of research results to industry. Are there any other advantages to working together?

Yes, access to start-ups! This is also very helpful for us because it gives us the opportunity to get to know young and talented entrepreneurs and to work with them. For example, we have designed various pilot projects together with the start-up RIIICO. RIIICO is now also a partner in our open, digital business platform Siemens Xcelerator. This is an excellent example of how Siemens works together with start-ups that are created at RWTH.

You first studied at the Technical University of Munich. Why did you then decide to pursue your doctorate at RWTH?

For me as an engineer, the interplay between practice and theory is always essential. It was also always very important to me to do lots of internships during my studies. I wrote my thesis at Siemens because I found the practical relevance very helpful. At the WZL, I had the opportunity to carry out many practical projects alongside my doctorate. I got to know about 40 factories during this time, which is of course very advantageous when you're doing a doctorate in the field of production planning and control. This enabled me to really understand what reality looks like and also to get to know the challenges of real production.

Do you have a special memory of RWTH that perhaps has nothing to do with your work?

To a certain extent, all the special memories have to do with the work, because they’re about the colleagues I worked with back then. We always had a very good relationship with each other and supported each other on a daily basis. On Thursdays, there was always an after-work beer in Pontstraße. Such special memories of this time are what stick in my memory. We are still in touch with one another. Some colleagues have even joined us at Siemens!

Just last week I was at the Systems Engineering Congress, which was also organized by RWTH and a former colleague.

Do you have any more ideas for innovations in the future?

The further development of digital twins, AI and computing power is opening up completely new possibilities. We are currently working on this at Siemens and it will keep us very busy over the next few years.

You once said in an interview that an innovation is good if it is successful on the market. Are there other criteria that characterize an innovation as being good?

The statement I made was a little different. I said: An invention, a piece of technology or a service is an innovation if it is successful on the market. What makes a good innovation? The purpose. Inventions can be successful on the market but they might not fulfill a positive purpose or be unsustainable.

We read that you wanted to be an inventor as a child. To what extent can you make this happen in your current position?

I wanted to become an inventor because I wanted to solve problems. My toy cars didn't have a garage, so I built a garage for them. I think that also translates very well to my situation today. I am still very interested in finding solutions to problems. But I don't come up with the problems myself, I look at the market and our customers and think about how we can best support them. And I of course do this in my current role, which is all about how we can introduce the technologies of the future to the market at some point. In this respect, I am still a bit of an inventor.

Thank you very much for the wonderfully informative interview!

– Author: Siba Fitzau. The interview was conducted in September 2023.