Digital partner for sustainability

DIGITAL PARTNER FOR SUSTAINABILITY AND

EFFICIENCY Schneider Electric drives digital transformation by integrating world-leading process and energy technologies to realise the full efficiency and sustainability opportunities for the business.

Established in 1836 as Schneider & Cie and renamed Schneider Electric in 1999, the European multinational company provides energy and automation digital solutions with operations in over 100 countries and more than 135,000 employees. In 2019, the company posted revenues of €27.2 billion.

In 2010, Schneider Electric refocused to include software, critical power and smart grid applications through strategic acquisitions. In 2015, the company launched a brand strategy called “Life Is On” which aims to showcase the business and societal value of sustainability and efficiency.

Since 2019, Schneider Electric has operated as three business units: energy management, industrial automation and services. The energy management business provides installation components, software and integrated solutions for the management of energy in medium voltage and grid automation, low voltage and building automation, secure power and cooling applications.

Social role

The fourth industrial revolution, or Industry 4.0, represents a longterm growth field for Schneider Electric. The company develops discrete industrial and machine automation as well as process automation products and solutions for the industrial sector, including programmable relays, motion controllers and interface modules for simple machines, to complex process systems for smart manufacturing. The company is also a provider of software for industrial automation and control.

“Two critical disruptions — digital and renewables — can help us rethink our energy model and protect our planet’s future. At Schneider, we combine these technologies to advance a world that increases efficiency and sustainability for buildings, industries, infrastructures, IT, and cities,” says Jean-Pascal Tricoire, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer, Schneider Electric.

To this end, in 2019, Schneider Electric partnered with the Business for Inclusive Growth (B4IG) coalition, joining forces with 34 international companies to invest a combined total of over $1 billion in more than 50 current and future initiatives, benefiting 100 million people to date.

In 2020, the company launched the Tomorrow Rising Fund to support the communities around us facing the coronavirus pandemic, and confirmed that the global pandemic will not compromise the achievement of its sustainability goals for 2020. Schneider Electric is set to keep the bar high for its 2030 commitments: to empower the worldwide ecosystem to fight climate change and uphold its responsibilities towards inclusive growth.

Optimisation through digital transformation

Schneider Electric is committed to be the partner of its customers in their journeys toward sustainability, with its focus on innovation

for an all-digital and all-electric world. The emergence of the digital economy has created opportunities for IoT-enabled platforms which Schneider Electric has identified as a growth opportunity. In 2016, the company launched EcoStruxure, its IoT-enabled architecture.

The EcoStruxure Platform connects everything in an enterprise from the shop floor to the top floor, collecting critical data, from sensors to the cloud, analysing data to discover meaningful insights, enabling action based on real-time information and business logic. The EcoStruxure Platform is the foundational technology backbone on which Schneider Electric solutions are built and delivered.

In October 2020 Schneider Electric announced the launch of EcoStruxure™ Plant Advisor, the next evolution in IoT digital plant management. A scalable, open IoT platform built within the company’s EcoStruxure™ architecture, it gives industrial enterprises focused insights to understand process and operational data and uniquely enables common cross-function, live monitoring and application data-sharing. This leads to faster improvements in operational performance, improved quality control, reduction in energy and raw materials use, better maintenance and increased profitability.

Developed for and perfected with Schneider Electric’s worldwide Smart Factories, EcoStruxure™ Plant Advisor empowers operations and production professionals with meaningful, specific business insights through contextualized live data, enabling them to make improvements in machine performance, predictive maintenance and

asset performance. Based on pilot projects, EcoStruxure™ Plant Advisor could generate €2.8 million p.a. in improvements for a typical €100 million manufacturing site.

At the forefront

The company has further advanced the remote management and monitoring of data centres and edge computing deployments with an AI-supported UPS battery health assessment – an industry breakthrough in predictive capability.

In addition, to make remote management and monitoring even more accessible to all customers, the company has made its APC by Schneider Electric Smart-UPS available with a pre-installed Network Management Card 3 (NMC3) for advanced cyber security.

Due to the increased need for remote management in distributed edge computing or hyper-converged IT environments, Schneider Electric is also announcing the NetShelter 9000 Series Switched Rack Power Distribution Unit (PDU), which offers increased remote management reliability over a wider temperature range. Schneider Electric’s three latest introductions make remote monitoring and management more robust and secure for IT operators across the globe.

“Schneider Electric has always been at the forefront of innovation and since launching our EcoStruxure IT platform, we’ve been simplifying remote operations in the cloud and at the edge,” said Jonathan Healey, VP and General Manager, Software and Management Systems, Schneider Electric. “With these enhancements, we are driving forward the latest technology to help data centre and IT customers be more predictive and provide business continuity from anywhere, anytime.” n