The steam turbines business unit at Siemens is a leader in

delivering powerful, efficient machinery to the global power

generation industry. However, the company’s long tradition of
engineering excellence means that there are only incremental
performance gains to be realized from its new product designs.
Here, head of Global Steam Turbine Technology, Leif Paulukuhn,
discusses how the company is leveraging the most
advanced technologies to support
innovation — and ensure that its
engineering team remains at
the forefront of the industry.

Dr. Leif Paulukuhn heads the global technology development at Siemens’ Steam
Turbine Business. Since 2014, he has been responsible for developing a leading
technological basis for all Siemens steam turbines worldwide, including blading and
material technologies. Paulukuhn joined Siemens in 2005, serving in a variety of
technical leadership roles. He holds an M.Sc. and a Ph.D. in mechanical engineering
and an M.Sc. in business administration from RWTH Aachen University.

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DIMENSIONS: Siemens is a longtime leader in the world- For our company, that means delivering robust, reliable
wide power generation industry. What changes have you designs that have been verified before they’re installed in
witnessed recently in the industry, and how has Siemens our customers’ plants. After all, in the power generation
adapted to those changes? business, non-conformance cost is high. A widespread outage
can not only mean inconvenience, but it can have serious
LEIF PAULUKUHN: The global push for greater and financial implications.
greater energy efficiency has forced power plants to
function in new ways. As utilities increasingly adopt D: What role does product innovation play in meeting these new
alternative energy sources such as wind, water and market needs?
solar, the incoming power supply has become less
constant. Plants cycle on and off more frequently, LP: The reality is that the steam turbine industry is relatively
but our turbines must operate consistently and mature. Siemens was founded in 1847 and began to focus on
reliably each time they start up. Siemens’ product power generation in 1946. Today, the company has more than
development team must engineer our equipment 20,000 turbines installed in power plants around the globe. We have
for volatile operating parameters and shifting engineered our products very well, which means there is little room
thermal conditions that are very different from for improvement in our core products. Of course, we still do focus on
the past. In addition, our turbines are being “clean sheet” turbine designs that look toward the future.
pushed to achieve higher performance in an
effort to produce as much energy as possi- When you multiply even small gains across our thousands of customer
ble, as efficiently as possible. sites, we are making a huge collective impact on global energy efficiency.

“The global push for greater

and greater energy efficiency
has forced power plants to
function in new ways.”

In order to achieve these incremental gains,

one of our key strategies has been to identify and
leverage the most advanced technologies available to support our
product development efforts. Our goal is to capitalize on the best available
technologies to understand product performance at a very fine level of detail
— then keep improving that performance incrementally.

D: Can you tell us more about your focus on advanced technologies — and how
your team applies technology?

LP: Certainly engineering simulation has been an essential tool for Siemens
for many years. Most of the highly educated engineers in our steam turbine
technology development team are trained in simulation. Why have we placed
such an emphasis on simulation? Because it’s critical to ensuring product reli-
ability. With so much at stake, we have strong confidence that our turbines
will perform as expected under real-world conditions.

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Engineering simulation gives our designers the opportunity For example, if an engineer demonstrates a real mastery
to predict how our products will work under the diverse, of CFD, then he or she can add the greatest value by
demanding operating conditions that characterize today’s remaining focused on CFD — and establishing a
power plants. We can even visualize the flows that are “center of excellence” on our team. If any employ-
happening inside our equipment, which is impossible to ees are struggling with a CFD challenge, they can
achieve using any other means. We can test the impacts of take advantage of the knowledge of this high-level
400 tons of force on our turbine blades, which also would expert.
not be possible under any other conditions.
Siemens has found this idea of a technical track
In addition, Siemens leverages advanced technology to very useful in attracting highly skilled employ-
gather real-time information on how our thousands of ees who can support our future leadership, as
installed turbines are performing in customer plants. well as accelerating our overall product devel-
Sensors on these machines collect enormous amounts of opment cycle. With so many experts available
data on equipment efficiency, uptime and downtime, vibra- on our team, we can rapidly address even
tion, temperature and other key performance aspects. By the most complex design issues and move
analyzing this data and providing insights to the product forward.
development team, Siemens is making continuous improve-
ments in our turbine designs. For example, by understand- D: Steam turbines are only one component
ing actual steam temperature distributions, we have been of a power plant — and Siemens provides
able to further shorten turbine startup times. the full generation system. How do you
work together across Siemens to drive
innovation via technology?

LP: At the corporate level, we have

adopted the same commitment
to advanced technology that we
embrace in the steam turbines
unit. Best-in-class engineering
tools and practices, including
simulation, are a way of life
across our global business. Our
executives recognize that we
can only maintain our prod-
This post-installation technology application is a valuable uct leadership by providing
complement to the simulation exercises that take place our engineers with the best
before products are sent into the field. Obviously, our simu- available resources.
lations will be most valuable if we are setting parameters
and boundary conditions that are based on real-world oper- As huge volumes of
ating data. And, if there are areas of concern that arise from performance data come
field data, our engineers can conduct extremely targeted
simulations to study those specific issues.

D: You’ve actually defined an organizational hierarchy for

your engineering team that rewards technical excellence.
Can you talk about that?

LP: In most engineering organizations, there is only one

career path and it’s a management track. Engineers who
perform well in their functional roles are promoted to
managing teams of employees performing the same role.
So an engineer might start as a computational fluid dynam-

“ Best-in-class
ics (CFD) specialist, then progress over time to managing a
team of CFD experts.

However, at Siemens we believe that the mastery of engineering

advanced engineering technology is extremely valuable in tools and practices,
maintaining our market leadership — and we believe that
technical expertise should be recognized and rewarded. including simulation,
While we have a traditional management track, we also have are a way of life across
a unique career path focused on technical excellence.
our global business. “

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 As huge volumes of performance data come in from
the field — not only about turbines, but about other
Siemens products — the company has invested in the
IT resources to manage that data. Siemens has also
created a dedicated analytics team that identifies the
key insights to feed back to our product developers. Data
analysis is really essential in order to keep improving
the efficiency of our products. We’re fortunate to have an
expert team devoted to that task.

In many ways, Siemens places a very high value on the

newest technologies and leading best practices. This posi-
tions Siemens to help our worldwide customers keep up
with changing consumer demands and the drive for higher
and higher energy efficiency. We have a long history of provid-
ing superior product systems, but we’re not resting on our past
success. Instead, we’re really focused on technology leadership
across our business, including in our engineering function. It’s
that commitment to technology and innovation that is positioning
Siemens for another 70 years of success in power generation.

Siemens at a Glance
2015 revenues: €75.63 billion
Number of employees: 362,000
Headquarters: Berlin and Munich,
Germany

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