Siemens has announced the launch of SIMATIC AX WinCC Unified Elements, an IT-like engineering application for the SIMATIC WinCC Unified system. This application empowers automation engineers to build, perform version control, and deploy visualisation engineering projects with the same workflows used by IT software developers. The application offers manufacturers an opportunity to bring modern software practices to the plant floor.
The manufacturing industry faces a widening gap between the pace of digital transformation and the availability of skilled automation talent. As product development and change cycles shrink while the need for efficiency grows, a new generation of IT-minded engineers expects modern software development tools that move beyond traditional engineering ecosystems. SIMATIC AX WinCC Unified Elements addresses this gap with an open, code-based visualisation engineering environment that runs alongside traditional graphical, drag-and-drop, editor-based workflows.
Key innovations for accelerated development include:
• Full project generation from human-readable YAML files: At the software’s core, the application empowers engineers to build complete automation projects, combining AI-generated code, configurations, scripts, and reusable library packages into a ready-to-deploy build.
• Seamless hybrid workflows: Embedded hybrid workflows enable simultaneous work with both graphical development environments and direct code editing, with the two responsive to each other in real time.
• Open architecture: Users can run custom web controls in the same environment without requiring external APIs.
• Enhanced collaboration: Native Git integration provides full project history, branching, and merge-request workflows for visualisation of project development, supporting real-time coworking among distributed teams. The extension-based IDE, built on the Open VSX marketplace, provides customisation capabilities so engineers can tailor the development environment to their needs and receive new features via background updates, with no forced upgrades or additional licensing costs.
“We’re witnessing a fundamental shift in industrial automation where the speed of innovation is no longer limited by engineering tools, but enabled by them,” says Adrien Amar, global business development manager, Software Defined Automation and SIMATIC AX WinCC Unified Elements at Siemens Digital Industries. “For decades, we’ve helped manufacturers automate their production lines; now we’re automating the automation itself. With SIMATIC AX WinCC Unified Elements, engineers can generate, validate, and deploy automation projects at software speed, using AI generation, CI/CD pipelines and the version control that IT teams have relied on for years.”
“The release of SIMATIC AX WinCC Unified Elements marks an important step forward in modernising industrial engineering workflows, bringing visualisation and control engineering together in a unified development environment,” adds Cory Rinaldi, portfolio sales enablement manager SCADA & Edge, Siemens North America. “By combining visual and text-based engineering, native Git integration, and AI-ready workflows, we’re helping customers accelerate development, improve collaboration, and adopt IT-driven engineering practices without compromising the reliability expected in industrial automation. Initially supporting WinCC Unified PC Runtime applications, WinCC Unified Elements provides customers with a modern engineering approach, while expanding the flexibility and choices available within the Siemens automation portfolio.”
SIMATIC AX WinCC Unified Elements extends the SIMATIC AX family, which previously focused solely on PLC programming, into visualisation, providing engineers with a single, IT-aligned environment to develop both control logic and its interfaces.
For more information contact Siemens South Africa, [email protected], www.siemens.co.za
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