Cloud technologies promise lower costs, improved production quality, greater flexibility and efficiency… companies can implement tools for decision support and modeling. Because these tools will now have actual, current data as a basis for dashboards and recommendations, it will be much easier to make informed decisions that measure the impact of actions by the desired outcome (for example, by demonstrating what production output can be achieved at what cost). A well-defined digitalisation strategy can help address the concerns of production, management, and investors by demonstrating how companies can master the challenges of a changing fibre market that asks for higher production flexibility and efficiency. And the potential of digitalisation for process optimisation is huge. LOOKING AT THE NEXT LEVEL: CLOUD TECHNOLOGIES FOR THE FIBRE INDUSTRY As the world becomes increasingly connected, digitalisation is a key optimisation of assets for maximum uptime. In addition, MindSphere offers users the ability to immediately develop, deploy, and run digital services and create their own applications or even new business models. As an open cloud-based platform for industrial applications, MindSphere supports plug-and-play connectivity using open standards. The system can be deployed as a public, private, or on-premise cloud solution and provides an open interface for the development of customer-specific apps. With these MindApps – whether from Siemens or third parties – plant operators can implement a vast array of data analytics capabilities to improve asset transparency and gain analytical insights. CASE STUDY 4: SMART MOTOR CONCEPTS AS AN EXAMPLE OF DIGITALLY ENHANCED ELECTRIFICATION AND AUTOMATION One area in which cloud-based services are already being applied WORLD PULP&PAPER 79 differentiator that will enable companies to remain competitive. Cloud technologies promise lower costs, improved production quality, greater flexibility and efficiency, shorter response times to customer requests and market demands, and new and innovative business opportunities. By collecting real- time process data in a cloud- based solution for data analytics, companies can use advanced or predictive analytics to further improve maintenance and production activities, energy data management, and resource optimisation. MindSphere, the cloud-based open Internet of Things (IoT) operating system from Siemens, can provide such an information ecosystem with data analytics and connectivity capabilities, tools for developers, and applications and services, as shown in Figure 2. It helps evaluate and use data to gain process insights and drive the performance and Figure 3. Digital Fibre Ecosystem.