Siemens has brought back one of its oldest horticultural products - rebuilt from the ground up. The company's SIGA platform, originally a climate controller developed in the 1960s, has been relaunched as a full industrial automation and digitalisation solution aimed at greenhouse and indoor farming operations in the Netherlands and globally. The reintroduction targets a sector facing mounting pressure to standardise processes, reduce energy costs, and compete in an increasingly data-driven agricultural environment.
The timing reflects real operational urgency. Many greenhouse operations still run separate, disconnected systems for climate control, irrigation, lighting, and logistics - each generating data that never talks to the other. That fragmented infrastructure creates inefficiencies that are difficult to quantify and harder to fix. Modern retail and agricultural supply chains - from cannabis dispensary pos new york operations managing real-time inventory to Dutch tomato growers trying to reduce heating costs - share a common pressure: integrate your systems or fall behind. SIGA positions itself as the platform that closes that gap for controlled environment agriculture.
What distinguishes the new SIGA from a typical vendor lock-in play is its open architecture. Rather than requiring growers to commit to a closed Siemens ecosystem, the platform is built on open industrial standards, allowing sensors, actuators, LED systems, cameras, and access controls from third-party suppliers to plug into a single central environment - provided they use standard protocols. That distinction matters commercially. Growers retain freedom to choose their technology partners, and system integrators can build custom installations without starting from scratch on every project.
Industrial DNA Applied to Horticulture
SIGA draws directly from Siemens' industrial portfolio - the same technology stack deployed in automotive manufacturing, process industries, and critical infrastructure including bridges and tunnels. That heritage carries practical weight. The hardware is engineered for reliability in demanding environments, and the platform is designed with redundancy built in: if one system component fails, another assumes its functions to keep operations running. For a greenhouse operator mid-harvest, that kind of resilience is not a feature - it is a baseline requirement.
Tom Visser, Solution Architect CEA at Siemens, describes SIGA as a "semi-ready-made solution" - a library of pre-configured functionalities that system integrators can assemble and adapt for specific installations, from traditional glass greenhouses to vertical farms and research environments. That modular structure accelerates implementation and reduces development costs, which matters particularly for mid-sized growers that want to automate but lack the engineering staff to commission bespoke solutions.
Cybersecurity is built into the architecture, not added as an afterthought. Visser notes the platform is designed in line with Cyber Resilience Act principles - relevant as greenhouse operations become increasingly connected and therefore increasingly exposed to the same digital risks facing any networked industrial environment.
Data as the Real Operational Asset
The deeper argument Siemens is making with SIGA is about data - specifically, what growers can do with it once their systems are connected. Through edge computing, the platform collects operational data from controllers and makes it available for higher-level analysis. Siemens and partners within its Xcelerator ecosystem have developed applications on top of that data layer: energy management tools, AI-driven operational monitoring, water hygiene services, and intelligent LED control.
Here's the practical implication: when climate settings, machine performance, and production output are all visible in one place, growers can identify relationships between variables that siloed systems simply cannot surface. That translates into faster decisions, fewer costly interventions, and more consistent yields. As Rick Schneiders, Head of Future Food at Siemens, puts it, understanding those relationships enables "better analysis and faster, well-informed decisions" - which is exactly the competitive advantage that separates efficient large-scale operations from those managing by instinct.
Siemens is also making a point about scale. SIGA can be introduced incrementally. Growers do not need to replace existing infrastructure in a single capital-intensive overhaul - they can start with a specific area of operations, generate data, demonstrate value, and expand from there. For operators managing tight margins, that staged approach to digitalisation is considerably more attractive than a rip-and-replace proposition.
What This Means for the Broader Supply Chain
The Netherlands is a global reference point for greenhouse horticulture, and what gets adopted at scale there tends to travel. SIGA's international rollout - backed by Siemens' global service network - positions the platform to influence how controlled environment agriculture is automated well beyond Dutch borders. Visser frames the ambition clearly: connect multiple greenhouse operations intelligently, optimise the entire production chain from harvest through processing and distribution, and contribute measurably to the broader challenge of feeding a growing global population more efficiently.
That is a large claim. But the operational mechanics underneath it - open standards, modular integration, edge computing, and sector-specific applications - are concrete enough to evaluate on their own terms. Whether SIGA delivers at that scale depends on adoption by system integrators and the willingness of growers to share data across an open ecosystem. Both are real variables. What is clear is that Siemens is making a serious, infrastructure-level commitment to a sector it last addressed with any depth in the 1960s. Siemens will be present at GreenTech, where SIGA will be on display at stand 05.355.
