Siemens Makes $55.8M Software Grant to Mott Community College
DETROIT (WWJ) -- The German industrial technology giant Siemens Wednesday announced an in-kind software grant worth $55.8 million to Mott Community College in Flint.
Siemens says Mott students will now have access to the same product lifecycle management software used in nearly every manufacturing environment in the world to improve productivity and efficiency in the manufacturing process, including 80 percent of the world's automakers.
The announcement was made at Ford Field in Detroit during the 2014 Automotive Summit at the Manufacturing in America Symposium sponsored by Siemens and Electro-Matic.
Chuck Grindstaff, president and CEO of Siemens PLM Software, said Siemens has been working with Mott and providing computer-aided design and engineering software to the school for 15 years.
"Now, we're upping the game," Grindstaff said. "They've grown to a point where now we want to engage across the entire product life cycle."
Mott students have had access to Siemens' NX software for computer-aided design, manufacturing and engineering analysis, and Siemens Tecnomatix software for digital manufacturing. With Wednesday's announcement, Siemens' Teamcenter software will now be used in Mott Community College's Technology Division to help expand and modernize its curriculum in design and process technologies. This curriculum is part of Mott's certificates and associate degrees in design, manufacturing and service industry specialties, as well as computer and IT courses and degree programs.
About 2,000 of Mott's 10,000 students will have access to the software under the grant.
Grindstaff said the new software will not only allow students to design and engineer products, but also predict how those products will perform, how they will operate, and how the factory that will produce those products should be designed and built. The software even considers end-of-life recycling of the products and the equipment used to make them.
Bill Boswell, Siemens senior director for partner strategy, said Siemens is introducing Teamcenter at the collegiate level "because of requests from local OEMs and manufacturing companies." Mott joins schools like the University of Michigan, Michigan State University, Kettering University and Oakland University in having access to the technology.
Said Mott president M. Richard Shaink: "We believe that partnerships like this will allow the college to better understand and update programs that prepare the future workforce for success ... We see this technology as a critical element of the innovation enterprise that will lead to the development of new and better products and ultimately to new and better jobs for the greater southeast Michigan region."
Siemens PLM software is also used by more than 77,000 global customers, not just in automotive, but also in the aerospace, consumer products, medical devices, shipbuilding and apparel industries. Detroit-area Siemens customers include Ford, Daimler, General Dynamics, General Motors, Delphi and BorgWarner.
Siemens' PLM software division is based in Plano, Texas. More at www.siemens.com/plm.
Founded in 1923, Mott Community College serves more than 10,000 students with a wide variety of academic and career-realted programs. More at http://www.mcc.edu/index.shtml.
