Siemens Educates Future Plant Managers With Game

On a computer near you right now: Plantville, the innovative offering from Siemens Industry, that simulates the experience of being a plant manager.

The game, the brainchild of Tom Varney, Siemens head of marketing communications, is designed to engage customers, employees, prospects and the general public about what it takes to be a plant manager. It will also help drive awareness of Siemens technologies and brand.

"We were looking for a way to make manufacturing cool," Varney says. "We figured we can not only make it appealing to the next generation of manufacturing workers, but build brand preference for Siemens products."

People can find the game at www.plantville.com. At press time, the game was already being played in 81 countries.

The game enables players to improve the health of hteir plants by learning about and applying industrial and infrastructure products and solutions from Siemens and will be measured on a number of Key Performance Indicators (KPIs), including safety, on-time delivery, quality, energy management and employee satisfaction.

Throughout the game, players will interact with Pete the Plant Manager, whose plant has just won the "Plant of the Year" award. Pete will share his best practices throughout the game to help players achieve outstanding results in plant performance. He uses webisodes, the Plantville Caf, Puzzlers and Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter accounts to talk with gamers, provide hints to playing the game and host a leaderboard for contestants.

In Plantville, players can select which of the three virtual plants they would like to manager first: a bottling plant, a vitamin plant or a plant that builds trains. At the start of the game, each type of plant is faced with different challenges. The players must identify the challenges facing their plant and implement solutions to improve the plant's KPIs.

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