Siemens Features New Eigen Engineering Agent Capabilities

Siemens announces two new capabilities for the Eigen Engineering Agent, its AI for industrial automation engineering. The agent moves AI beyond on-screen suggestions to action in the physical world, according to Siemens.

Industrial AI that acts, not just advises

The Eigen Engineering Agent plans, executes, and validates industrial automation engineering tasks end-to-end. It understands the project, writes the control software, configures the system and keeps refining its work until it meets defined quality benchmarks. 

The Eigen Engineering Agent works alongside the TIA Portal, Siemens’ engineering software platform, and is part of the Siemens Xcelerator portfolio.

Productivity gains in the real world

More than 100 companies in 19 countries are using the Eigen Engineering Agent. The agent accelerates everyday engineering work such as programmable logic controller (PLC) programming, human-machine interface (HMI) visualization and device configuration, with measurable gains:

• 2 to 5 times faster execution than manual workflows

• up to 50% efficiency gains in engineering

• 80% improvement in overall solution quality

“The Eigen Engineering Agent shows what AI can deliver beyond the digital world,” says Peter Koerte, member of the Managing Board of Siemens AG and the company’s chief technology officer and chief strategy officer. “It makes companies up to 50 percent more efficient in complex engineering work, while making the results more reliable. That’s what it takes to build the machines, factories and infrastructure that keep everyday life running—and it’s what real value from AI in the physical world looks like.”

With the new capabilities – ECAD integration and standards-compliant project generation – the Eigen Engineering Agent now understands more of the context that comes before software development itself, including hardware topology, machine structure and engineering intent. 

ECAD integration: closing the gap between electrical design and automation code

The Eigen Engineering Agent reads electrical design files in widely used formats including XML and AML. It detects inconsistencies, resolves or flags them, adds devices to the TIA Portal project, configures the connections and generates PLC tags grounded in the actual hardware topology.

The Eigen Engineering Agent now turns machine descriptions into standards-compliant projects in minutes. Engineers describe the machine in plain language: its stations, devices and how it should behave. The agent generates a complete project that follows the Siemens Automation Framework, Siemens' best-practice reference for structuring TIA Portal projects. The project opens directly in TIA Portal.

“Engineering teams lose time between electrical design and software and between knowing best practices and applying them,” says Vasi Philomin, Executive Vice President and Head of Data and AI at Siemens. “With these new capabilities, the Eigen Engineering Agent brings hardware topology, system structure and engineering intent into the automation workflow, enabling automation engineers to start from a project that already reflects the system they need to automate.”

Both capabilities are included in the standard Eigen Engineering Agent subscription at no extra cost.

Sources: Press materials received from the company and additional information gleaned from the company’s website.