The core of the "Vision 2020+" corporate strategy is to give the individual businesses more entrepreneurial freedom under the Siemens brand and thus sharpen the focus on the respective markets. There are also plans to strengthen the growth portfolio by investing in new growth areas such as IoT services, decentralized energy management and infrastructural electromobility. The concentrated expansion of industrial digitalization will also contribute to this. In the medium term, this should increase the annual growth rate of sales and the profit margin of the Industrial Business by two percentage points each.

The "Vision 2020" strategy program initiated in 2014 has largely been completed. "We have worked hard over the past four years. Almost all businesses are now significantly more profitable, customer satisfaction is at a record level and our Digital Factory is the market leader in industrial digitalization," said Joe Kaeser, President and CEO of Siemens AG. The Siemens CEO described digitalization as the biggest change in industrial history.

More entrepreneurial freedom, less central control

The aim of the new Group structure is to give the individual businesses greater entrepreneurial freedom. To this end, the organizational level of the previous divisions will be eliminated, the country organizations will be reorganized for greater customer focus and the Group headquarters will be made leaner. "With the further development of our strategy, we are now building the next generation of Siemens. Less control from headquarters and more freedom for the businesses will make us stronger and more flexible," said Kaeser.

Below Group level, there will be three Operating Companies and three Strategic Companies in future. The new structure will come into effect as of the new financial year on October 1, 2018. It will be implemented gradually and should be completed by March 31, 2019. The Building Technologies (BT), Energy Management (EM), Power and Gas (PG) and large parts of Process Industries & Drives (PD) and Digital Factory (DF) will be merged into the three new Operating Companies (Gas & Power, Smart Infrastructure and Digial Industries). The company's business units will also be reorganized and assigned to the three operating companies.