Industry assessment

Would you like to learn about the potential of digitization in general but also specifically in regard to your company? What effects will this have on the IoT security of your company? And how can you not just enhance your capability to innovate in digitization but also find new ways to increase your efficiency? With Voith, you will find the right partner to answer all of your Questions.

Voith’s customers benefit from our experience. We help you achieve maximum system efficiency in order to keep pace with global technology competition by means of innovative products, platforms and solutions. Our experts provide their expertise and experience in the development, design and trouble-free, maintenance-free operation of hydropower plants, paper machines, as well as industrial and mobility Solutions to users and operators throughout the world. Our methods allow you to better recognize and make use of your company’s potential. We are assisted in this by having already established digital transformation change processes ourselves. We are constantly extending our domain knowledge with advanced digital expertise.

Voith has been driving digital transformation and automation in industry for many years now. A paradigm shift in business models towards the platform economy is possible due to the digitization and networking of machines and systems in the Industrial Internet of Things (IIoT). Platforms can be used as fully developed infrastructure without individual companies needing to design them or wait for them. Companies which, in terms of their IIoT-readiness, fully embrace the networking of systems, machines and components become more productive. They can optimize machine run times and profitably use production data. This benefit is accompanied by enormous financial and organizational advantages and creates possibilities for new business. This is exactly where substantial added value is generated: through the scalability of solutions.

With our IoT Consulting Services, IoT Solutions and on-site services, our expertise is not limited to just our machines, systems and solutions. Instead, our field-service technicians are always on the move across the world, even maintaining and repairing non-Voith systems. We are a one-stop shop for quick and reliable services – with a worldwide, but locally available range of services from a large, powerful service organization. Starting with classic spare-parts delivery, these services also include engineering support with problems, replacement, retrofit, performance improvement and, of course, maintenance, repair and overhauling of equipment.
Voith Service can do all this: Classic engineering and consulting services, calculations and turn-key solutions that extend beyond primary third-party equipment. Accordingly, our B2B customers and partners can substantially increase machine and system availability while achieving greater efficiency by saving money on maintenance.

As a partner to industry, Voith has developed an industrial internet security concept that goes beyond classic IT security and integrates networked machines and systems into the Industrial Internet of Things. Market researchers at Gartner estimate that, in industry alone, 4.3 billion components will be networked across industries in 2020. Added to this are an additional 3.1 billion machines, systems and assets in individual industry sectors.

Massive networking of devices using standardized data lines and protocols, namely over the Internet, creates new challenges. For the first time in history, machines and systems vulnerable would be vulnerable from outside over the data lines. And attacks can be a costly and devastating affair for companies. According to "Accenture’s 2019 Annual Cost of Cybercrime study, there has been a 72 percent increase in the annual cost resulting from cyber attacks in the last five years alone.

It is not just the sheer number of networked devices that is raising the danger of attacks and security vulnerabilities overall. In addition, according to the BSI, the German Federal Office for Information Security (BSI), there is the fact that industrially networked devices “unlike traditional Internet-connected devices such as PCs, laptops and servers (…) often lack their own prevention systems. Compared to PCs, they generally have significantly fewer resources available for security mechanisms so as to reduce costs and increase battery life.” The conclusion reached by the German Federal Office does not just sound alarming, it really is alarming. Such systems are not only easier to compromise, detecting these attacks is also significantly more difficult.

Consequently, Voith is pursuing a networked operation security strategy that integrates classic IT security with the new OT (Operational Technology) security.

This integrated approach to industrial Internet security or IoT security protects IT infrastructures as well as networked machines and systems down to individual components using similar means as both apply the same technique to generate, store, exchange and analyze data. Voith’s integrated approach is also based on more than 150 years’ experience in the production and reliable operation of paper making machines or hydropower plants. This often involves safety-critical systems that would endanger human life in the event of operational malfunction, power failure or floods.

Voith is also involved in the field of integrated security – for example, in the VDMA sector association the Open Industry 4.0 Alliance and the Open Group Forum, which and the Open Group Forum, which deals with the interoperability and security of industrially networked systems. This commitment is also based on the experience accumulated by Voith as one of the first companies to gain certification according to ISO standard 27001. This standard lays down the requirements for creating, implementing, maintaining and continuously improving documented information security management systems.

Based on these strong foundations, Voith offers its customers and partners an entire range of services to allow them to protect their industrially networked systems. As a result, Voith already created a Data Protection and Information Security Competence Center many years ago. The Voith Security Operations Team consists of qualified experts who are involved in the protection of IT infrastructures. As part of their work, the team monitors (industrial security monitoring) and analyzes (assessment) all security-related systems – company networks, servers, workplace computers and Internet services – and investigates them for anomalies.

The central component in this task is a sensor system that automatically analyzes, correlates and displays the large quantities of IT and OT information on its own. The automation of security processes is one of the most important measures in ensuring effective protection against attacks as well as providing additional benefits. Security automation aims to meet the growing expectations of cyber security faced with the ever more complex threat scenarios and the increasing complexity of IT infrastructures. In addition, it relieves IT of some of the perpetual cost pressures by reducing manual activities during inspections, actions and reports. Finally, automation supports companies in better meeting regulatory and compliance requirements.

Voith offers its customers security assessments based on various certifications and programs. These include ISO 27001 (IT security), IEC 62443 for industrial communications network security and NERC CIP, an American collection of different standards for critical infrastructure protection. The objective of the assessment is to locate and eliminate vulnerabilities.

Voith provides its products and solutions with adequate security strategies and dynamic measures as early as the development phase (“by design”). These security strategies continue to be followed in the default settings for the solutions at delivery (“by default”). However, security does not end with the delivery of new products. Rather, it is extended over the entire life cycle through flexible settings. This is necessary because an effective security strategy is never static. Instead, it is dynamic to meet the ever changing threat situations.

Despite all its experience and expertise, Voith is an organization that constantly learns too. We learn from and together with our customers because we listen closely to them – and their machines. Digitization even assists us in this. By using modern equipment, we can now listen even closer in the machine room, be able to detect even the smallest malfunctions early and avoid outages.

Predictive maintenance doesn’t require any new business models, “just” a few technical preparations. However, companies need well-founded knowledge and a “feel” for how their machines and systems function so as to be able to detect even the smallest deviation. As well as the technical conditions, experience and domain knowledge are absolutely vital. More than 150 years of expertise with hydropower plants, paper machinery and mobility solutions help Voith technicians and maintenance teams during predictive maintenance. This leads straightaway to an increase in operational efficiency for our customers. For some sectors, for example, the operators of hydro power plants and paper producers, Voith offers special Maintenance Management Software for predictive maintenance (“OnCare.Asset”). This software uses strategic and operational actions and turns them into a continuous improvement process and, through smart manufacturing, turns good manufacturing companies into smart ones.

Some companies are larger than Voith but very few have deeper knowledge about industry and its sectors. As a result, we can be a trailblazer and partner in specific digital development that can start at any point on the value-added chain. We enable our customers to digitize on their terms – based on their portfolio, tempo and specific ambitions.

This benefits both ourselves and other companies. But, in addition, we also see ourselves as part of the industrial core in Germany, Europe and beyond that is not merely an island of stability with its highly specialized, excellent medium-sized firms. With its Industry 4.0 strategies, this industrial core has also created a vision for the future with a global impact. We are firmly committed to concentrating on this strength and pressing on with the digitalization of industry and medium-sized firms. In the end, this benefits us all.