Siemens is collapsing four automation businesses into one org chart—and putting a lifelong automation executive at the top. Effective Oct. 1, 2026, Customer Services, Factory Automation, Motion Control, and Process Automation become a single unit simply called Automation. Rainer Brehm will be its president, reporting to Cedrik Neike, Managing Board member and CEO of Digital Industries.

The move is framed as part of Siemens’ ONE Tech Company strategy: help industrial customers build more flexible, productive, and resilient production systems by aligning hardware, software, and AI under fewer internal walls.

Brehm currently serves as Digital Industries COO for the automation business and CTO; he previously led the Factory Automation business unit.

Why Siemens is consolidating now

Neike’s public case is that industry’s future sits at the intersection of automation, software, and AI—and that a unified Automation unit is how Siemens packages faster innovation and more tailored solutions. Brehm, in turn, cast AI-enabled autonomous production as the competitive stakes: customers need a strong automation partner as AI remakes how plants scale and adapt.

Factory and motion control portfolios will sit alongside process automation and services—one P&L narrative for discrete and process buyers alike.

In his current COO/CTO role, Brehm has been steering software-defined automation and Industrial AI themes across the portfolio. That résumé is the point of the appointment: the new structure is not a rename; it is a bet that one leader should own the stack from PLC cells to process systems to lifecycle services.

Process automation joining the same unit as factory automation is meant to reduce the classic Siemens handoff between discrete and process selling motions.

What buyers should watch

Org charts do not ship firmware—but they decide roadmap priority, channel conflict, and how quickly software-defined and AI features cross product families. For plants already standardized on Siemens-class controls—or evaluating adjacent racks and drives from ABB automation portfolios and PLC/PAC platforms—the practical question is whether “one Automation” shortens integration stories or just relabels the same four catalogs.

Opinion

Consolidating factory, motion, process, and services is the right strategic instinct for an AI decade. Execution risk is cultural: process and discrete sales motions do not merge because a press release says so. Brehm’s Factory Automation and CTO path is a credible pick. The proof arrives after Oct. 1, when customers see one roadmap—not four slide decks stapled together.