Nearly two years after announcing a broad corporate reorganization, Siemens today said it was bringing its U.S. automation business in line with that restructuring, merging its Alpharetta, GA-based Energy & Automation group with a number of other Siemens units in the United States to form a new company.
The new company, called Siemens Industry, Inc., will be led by President and Chief Executive Daryl D. Dulaney, 56, formerly president and CEO of Siemens Building Technologies, Inc. Dennis Sadlowski, who was president of Siemens Energy & Automation, has left the company, according to a Siemens spokesman.Siemens Industry will consist of the former Siemens Energy & Automation as well as Siemens businesses in such areas as transportation and building technologies. Six divisions form the new company: Industry Solutions, Industry Automation, Drive Technologies, Building Technologies, Mobility, and Osram Sylvania. The unit will have roughly 33,000 employees, including about 10,000 from SE&A.
In November 2007, parent Siemens AG reorganized into three sectors: Industry, Energy, and Healthcare. The reorganization was announced by CEO Peter Loscher, who took over Siemens earlier that year as the company grappled with an embarrassing bribery scandal. The reorganization was designed, in part, to provide greater transparency and accountability as a reaction to that scandal, but Loscher said at the time that the change was also in response to “mega-trends” in demographics and climate change. An evaluation of Siemens’ capabilities showed, he said, that they cut across market lines, necessitating the three-sector structure.
Today’s action is the latest step in Siemens’ efforts to align its businesses around the world with the three-sector structure. Siemens said that it will now be able to offer its U.S. customers more integrated automation products as well as more “comprehensive industry-specific solutions.”
ARC Advisory Group analyst David Humphrey, who had not yet been briefed by Siemens on the reorganization, said in an interview that his initial reaction was that the change may provide Siemens with some advantages.
“They are pulling all of these companies under one roof and duplicating the global corporate structure in the U.S.,” said Humphrey, who is based in Germany. “I don’t think it is wrong. The U.S. is a special market and Siemens is still not the market leader in the U.S. They need a strong CEO who has some freedom to adapt products to American tastes.”
The reorganization, he said, “may help Siemens take one more step in the direction of being a truly global company.”
SE&A was formed in 1978 as Siemens-Allis and was jointly owned by Siemens AG and Allis-Chalmers of Milwaukee. Siemens-Allis sold standard electrical equipment for utilities and other industrial companies. In 1983, Siemens-Allis acquired the low-voltage electrical products business of Gould, Inc. Two years later, Siemens purchased Allis-Chalmers’ remaining interest in the company and changed the name to Siemens Energy & Automation.
