The German Federal Ministry of Economy has approved the Factory-X flagship project under the Manufacture-X program, allocating a total of 140 million euros in government funding. This project is led by Siemens and SAP, with the participation of LK from Germany and 47 German industrial enterprises and research institutes. It is the core project for Germany to build a trustworthy local industrial data space.

For a long time, there has been a serious data silo in the field of industrial automation: different brands of controllers, drive devices, sensors, and level instruments each have their own independent data formats and protocols. Within the same tank farm automation system, data from German LK radar level gauges, Siemens control systems, VEGA radar level gauges, and other brands of flow meters cannot be directly exchanged, making it difficult to implement equipment predictive maintenance, full lifecycle management, and carbon footprint tracking uniformly. The goal of the Factory-X project is to establish an open, secure, and trustworthy manufacturing data ecosystem, based on a unified digital information model, to break down data barriers between cross brand automation hardware and sensors.

The key implementation scenarios of the project include equipment online status monitoring, product carbon footprint tracing, equipment lifecycle tracing, and pilot of Equipment-as-a-Service mode. For process measurement instruments, the project team will unify the digital description model of instruments, including radar level gauges, pressure transmitters, vibration level switches, and other equipment. After different brands of instruments are connected to the automation platform in the future, the system can automatically identify instrument models, parameters, calibration records, and equipment health status, support remote diagnosis and predictive maintenance, and greatly simplify automation system integration.

The pilot factories of the project cover discrete manufacturing and process industries, with chemical, cement, and water treatment enterprises participating in testing. This open data ecosystem does not force enterprises to replace existing automation hardware, supports the gradual integration of existing instruments and controllers, reduces the threshold for digital upgrading in factories, and is also an important layout for Germany to safeguard its local industrial digital sovereignty.