Siemens presented the 'Eigen Engineering Agent' at the Hannover Messe 2026. The AI application is available immediately and is aimed specifically at industrial automation. Unlike conventional systems, it is designed not only to provide suggestions but also to carry out tasks independently.

The solution is directly integrated into technical systems and uses project data from the TIA Portal. This creates a detailed understanding of the context, which enables the processing of tasks such as PLC programming, HMI visualization and device configuration. The agent takes existing standards for safety, correctness and reliability into account.

According to the company, AI can carry out engineering processes two to five times faster than manual processes. Overall quality can increase by up to 80 percent and efficiency by up to 50 percent. One of the reasons for this is the shortage of skilled workers in automation technology and increasing time pressure in product development.

"As demand exceeds available capacity, automation technology is increasingly becoming a bottleneck," explains Vasi Philomin, Executive Vice President and Head of Data & Artificial Intelligence at Siemens. "Manufacturers are under great pressure. They have to deliver increasingly complex systems faster and faster, while the ongoing shortage of skilled workers is further exacerbating the situation. The 'Eigen Engineering Agent' stands for automation logic that meets the individual requirements of each customer, enabling engineers to implement even more complex projects more quickly. This product signals a fundamental shift away from AI that merely makes suggestions to AI that actually gets work done. In industrial environments, it is this difference that determines the value AI can create."

A key feature is multi-stage processing with self-monitoring: the agent breaks down tasks into individual steps, checks intermediate results and repeats processes until the results meet the project requirements. This is intended to reduce errors and generate directly usable results.

The technology has already been used in pilot projects with more than 100 companies in 19 countries. The spectrum ranged from automated code generation to the optimization of engineering workflows. In one example, the training period for new engineers was reduced from several weeks to just a few days, as project structures could be queried directly.

According to Siemens, there has also been an acceleration in industrial practice: Applications such as the creation of Structured Control Language (SCL) code or the configuration of production systems were significantly shortened. Companies from the automotive supply, metal processing and electromobility sectors used the agent to support their development processes.