Plamen Kiradjiev is the new Head of Solution Architects at German Edge Cloud

Since the start of the year, Plamen Kiradjiev has been Head of the new Solution Architects unit at German Edge Cloud (GEC), a Friedhelm Loh Group company specialising in edge and cloud solutions. The expert on the digitisation of industrial manufacturing processes had previously spent 27 years working for IBM, most recently as Global CTO in the field of Industry 4.0.

Eschborn/Frankfurt, 19 January 2022 – “Shop floor architectures based on edge clouds are the key to making substantial progress in the digital transformation of manufacturing industry,” says Plamen Kiradjiev, the new Head of Solution Architects at German Edge Cloud:

“On the one hand, it is important to make the data immediately usable in the factory without any security concerns. On the other hand, the systematic reuse of individual use cases by copying and pasting allows other plants to benefit, with the aid of a powerful architecture.”

When modernising in-house industrial IT infrastructures (brownfield) in particular, one critical requirement for success is to develop a future-oriented digital production platform that takes the existing IT architecture into account. The lessons learned must then be used to expand the other plants further, for example. The IT experts need a deep understanding of industrial automation processes. “The result must be open digital production platforms that can be used by production staff without any in-depth IT knowledge, and which simultaneously offer a wide range of long-term expansion options,” Mr. Kiradjiev explains.

This perspective helped to motivate him in switching to GEC: “Right from the beginning of the cooperation between GEC and IBM, I realised that ONCITE had struck the right nerve in implementing a factory edge appliance. It is an attractive incentive for developing the architectural ideas with the GEC team, as well as for creating synergy effects along the value chain for joint customers together with sister companies Rittal and Eplan.”

“In Plamen Kiradjiev, we are delighted to have a proven expert and digitalisation pioneer in industrial manufacturing on board,” says Dieter Meuser, Managing Director and CEO for Digital Industrial Solutions at German Edge Cloud. “As our team and our structures expand, we are increasing our power to make manufacturing companies fit for integrated production processes and the supply chains of the future.”

German Edge Cloud is the specialist company for edge-cloud-based solutions in the Friedhelm Loh Group. It makes production data quickly and easily available for the manufacturing industry with data sovereignty. The solutions from GEC, Rittal and Eplan complement modules with standardised data to help achieve greater transparency across the entire production plant, ranging from engineering, construction and documentation to operation, control and process optimisation.