By Agam Shah 

Hanna Hennig, the incoming chief information officer at Siemens AG, will help lead the industrial conglomerate's digital transformation and ensure a smooth information-technology transition for the spinoff of its power and gas business, the company said.

Ms. Hennig, CIO at lighting maker Osram Licht AG, will start in January and will manage about 2,400 employees. Munich-based Osram is a former unit of Siemens.

She succeeds Helmuth Ludwig, who has worked at Siemens for about 30 years and who became CIO in October 2016. In her new role, Ms. Hennig will report to Roland Busch, chief technology officer and deputy chief executive of Siemens.

Based at Siemens headquarters in Munich, Ms. Hennig will be in charge of the company's IT operations and will continue the rollout of key products including MindSphere, an Internet-of-Things platform developed in house to collect and analyze data from its own operations and those of client companies, a spokesman said in an email.

The MindSphere platform -- which works on cloud services from companies including Amazon.com Inc. and Microsoft Corp. -- collects data from equipment so companies can perform analytics to automate operations or make them more efficient.

Siemens is streamlining its business, planning to combine its power and gas unit and its renewable energy division and spin off the resulting company, Siemens Energy, to shareholders. The new company is slated to begin operations in September 2020, the Siemens spokesman said. Ms. Hennig will work to ensure all IT systems at the spinoff work from day one, he added.

The company, founded in 1847, is shedding the portfolio as part of a drive to boost profit by focusing on faster-growing and higher-margin businesses, including technology products that help connect factories and urban infrastructure to the internet. Siemens also provides design and automation software for sectors including the automotive and construction industries. In recent years, it has acquired technology companies such as Mendix, Mentor Graphics and CD-adapco.

"Siemens has never undertaken so much change in its 172-year history," Siemens Chief Executive Joe Kaeser said in an earnings call Thursday. The company said its net income more than doubled in its latest quarter, helped by a lower income-tax rate than in the year-earlier period, and its revenue rose 8%.

Ms. Hennig's role in the company's digital-transformation efforts will be important in showing that Siemens can take the lead in digitizing clients' factories, said Allan Behrens, founder and principal analyst at U.K.-based research company Taxal Ltd., which tracks the engineering and technology markets.

Digitizing factories can be complex and Siemens has the engineering, software and design expertise to help companies with their modernization efforts, Mr. Behrens said.

Write to Agam Shah at agam.shah@wsj.com

 

(END) Dow Jones Newswires

November 07, 2019 13:48 ET (18:48 GMT)

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