A machine builder's library

According to A+F electrical engineer Dirk Panhorst, the Simotion Top Loading library is a piece of software programmed by Siemens with an interface for applications engineers like himself. “Without it, we’d have had to do all the software engineering ourselves,” says Panhorst. “I suppose it would have taken us more than a year with one or two engineers involved to program all the functions in this machine had we not been able to pull them from the library.”

Panhorst and his engineering colleagues at A+F were among the first to use the Simotion modular concepts in a packaging machinery application. According to A+F head of electrical design Werner Woermann, the goal now at A+F is to limit in-house software development to 30% for the automation of any machine.