Brittany Ng, Siemens Maritime Division, On Getting the US Back in the Game

We sit down with Brittany Mays Ing, VP of Siemens Maritime, right after her US Senate testimony on “Less Hype, More Help” about AI and unpack what industrial AI looks like when you have to build real ships on real timelines. We connect digital twins, copilots, and the digital thread to the biggest constraint shipbuilders face today: talent, throughput, and first-time quality. 
• Why Brittany gets tapped to speak to Congress about industrial AI across manufacturing 
• How Siemens Maritime uses the Siemens Xcelerator portfolio plus Altair tools for shipbuilding 
• Why ship design tools look different from typical CAD and simulation workflows 
• What a record scale ship digital twin proves about complexity and visualization 
• Why AI in shipbuilding reduces repetitive work instead of eliminating jobs 
• How AI helps first-time quality, reduces rework and cuts burnout in shipyards 
• What “digital thread” means for suppliers, OEMs, and national defense readiness 
• How commercial, military, and unmanned vessel programs are reshaping the market 

Transcript

Welcome And Guest Introduction

Roopinder 0:00

Welcome to ENGtechnica TV, where we bring technology into focus by talking to leaders with technology of interest to engineers. Today's guest is Brittany Mays Ng. Brittany is a VP of the Maritime Division at Siemens. We've been dealing with their digital software industries division. Uh Brittany was recently part of a panel that went before US Congress Committee to uh testify about AI. And it was the Senate Committee on Commerce, Science and Technology led by Chairman Ted Cruz. Hi there. Hey Brittany. Hi, Brittany. You made it.

Brittany 0:47

I yes, I apologize. Um I tried to text you and send you a note as soon as I got into the Uber.

Roopinder 0:52

Thanks for keeping me updated.

Brittany 0:54

It's a long haul, but usually it's about 35, 40 minutes.

Roopinder 0:59

Okay.

Brittany 1:00

Uh 90 90 minutes is the longest that I've sat.

Roopinder 1:03

That's a new record. Oh, you don't look any worse for the wear.

Brittany 1:06

You know, Zoom has the touch-up appearance mode. Roopinder, it's great to meet you.

Roopinder 1:10

So I watched your your uh what would you call it? Was it not a hearing? Hearing is for criminals, right?

Brittany 1:16

Maybe not that sounds right. Yeah, hearing testimony, yap session with senators.

Roopinder 1:23

I don't know if we could have handled ourselves that well.

Todd 1:27

That's amazing, yeah. Like uh Roopinder said it feels like you're a celebrity, and I was like, Yes, she is. I don't know.

Brittany 1:34

I just certainly do not do not feel that way, but I appreciate appreciate it. It was um uh an incredible kind of out-of-body experience, I would say.

Roopinder 1:45

Was it? Yeah, you were well prepared. Now I see here this uh a panel was called Less Hype, More Help, AI That Improves Safety, Productivity, and Care. And I was just wondering, after I read that, I thought, how did that call come to you? How did Siemens Maritime get involved with that subject, right? I went, how'd you get that called? Were you like really surprising? What would it want for me?

Brittany 2:11

Yeah, no, it's a great question. So the reason that they called me is because I am relatively new to the maritime space. So I'm about two and a half years in and working with the Navy and about six, seven months into this role. But in my prior role, my entire job was actually architecting and implementing digital transformation projects for manufacturing. So I was a lot more cross-sector. So I worked in consumer goods, retail, healthcare, life sciences, and then, of course, a lot of aerospace and defense. And so they wanted, they wanted somebody that could speak to shipbuilding, just given the audience of um the senators that are on that subcommittee across the aisle.

Roopinder 2:58

Shipbuilding was a subject right off the bat. That was a known subject.

Why The Senate Called On Brittany

Brittany 3:01

That wasn't it was absolutely, but they didn't just want to talk about shipbuilding specifically, they wanted to talk industrial AI applications across manufacturing sectors.

Roopinder 3:12

Okay. I want to talk about shipbuilding too. So it's just fascinating right now with all that's going on. And uh, but before we get started, I wanted to get clear on uh on this division of yours, the maritime division, because I know nothing about it. I've been covering uh the digital software side of things.

Todd 3:30

Yeah.

Roopinder 3:31

You know, like the NX people and this team center people, yeah, those tools. Now, the maritime division, does it use those tools at all, or does it have its own shipbuilding and design tools?

Brittany 3:44

It does. Um, so we leverage the full suite of you know what we call Siemens Accelerator. You mentioned uh a couple of our core capabilities there. You may know we also recently at last year acquired Altair. And so we leverage the full suite of Altair products as well, inclusive of a couple of really interesting and niche shipbuilding applications like LiftShip is uh is an example. And then we use our entire suite of you know Mendix agentic AI capabilities as well. So we we leverage kind of the full stack of what big Siemens has to offer from a software perspective, and um, we sort of push different levels of maturity of uh those products. Maturity is defined by curated for shipbuilders or for ship design or for um just broad kind of part manufacturing, depending on the company and the use case.

Roopinder 4:40

Got it. So would you say shipbuilding design tools? Uh that seems strange to me. I cover all these industries, aviation as well. Aviation doesn't have its own set of tools, right? But shipbuilding seems to have its own uh purpose-built tools that are different than generic design tools.

Brittany 5:00

When you're designing a ship, of course, all there's all of these different variables and factors that the ship has to be able to navigate against, uh, thermodynamics waves crashing onto you, like all of just like the macro environmental factors. Uh-huh. And so the design simulation capabilities that we have, once again, they're just they're more um they're still out of the box, but they've been developed in partnership with you know our customers, and so they're more focused on specific things that ships need.

Roopinder 5:32

These ships are massive, they would have their own forces, their own considerations that are different than even like a big airplane. Uh I saw it somewhere though that what it could be the biggest 3D model or most sophisticated 3D model ever made was one by Hyundai?

Brittany 5:52

Hyundai Hundred with HD Hyundai, that's right.

Roopinder 5:55

Yeah, that was massive, so impressive. I don't know how many parts it had, but it was like in the millions, I think.

Brittany 6:01

Yes, exactly, exactly. Most most complex bill of materials or bomb that uh that we could ever imagine.

Roopinder 6:10

Yeah, you broke the record because the before that, the only thing I remember was that triple seven, the 777 that was that was uh created. Oh, this was like 30 years ago. Boeing created it with CATIA, I think, and maybe their own homegrown software. But uh but when that was done, that was the biggest thing ever done in 3D. But now ships have the record, huh?

Record Breaking Ship Digital Twin

Brittany 6:34

Now it's HG Hyundai holds the record. That's right. That's right. And uh it's interesting because that that digital twin specifically is visualized with NVIDIA you know capabilities. And so it's it's fascinating because it's got the complexity and the depth of you know the huge bomb, but then it's got the incredible visualization to be able to actually see that's you know powered by NVIDIA. And so it was a super interesting, I'll say, use case uh to show how that partnership has been able to play out.

Roopinder 7:08

Yeah, yeah. So the whole ship is being made digitally, right? The shipbuilding facility is digital, the ship itself is digital, right? The biggest or most modern or maybe both shipbuilding facility right now, the the one in South Korea?

Brittany 7:24

They're definitely one of the biggest, most sophisticated players in terms of designing and producing um ships globally and and certainly within within South Korea as well.

Roopinder 7:36

You're not an engineer, right?

Brittany 7:37

You are I'm not I'm not an engineer um by by trade. And so yes, I have I've had to learn learn very quickly. And um my background is actually in management consulting, which in some ways has served me very well. And in some ways, you know, has I've had to unlearn certain things. But one of the things that's really helped me is in consulting, you have to learn very quickly sort of what's important and tie and piece a lot of different themes and factors together in order to solve like a very complex problem. And uh that that skill set has helped me in this role just to kind of learn as fast as I can.

Roopinder 8:12

Yeah. I imagine if you can handle senators, you can probably handle engineers too.

AI And The Shipbuilding Talent Gap

Brittany 8:18

Totally different skill sets. Um the my my joke is that in you know, delivering implementation, a digital, uh, digital transformation and implementation, that engineers are actually one of the hardest um functions to get to change because uh the by virtue of a high-performing engineer, you know, that person has a very strong uh conviction on how to do the job. And that's actually like why they end up being so good, right? And so trying to highlight the art of the possible or different ways of working and kind of work with them to get their buy-in on how to do change control differently, right? Um, there's an art for sure to uh facilitating those conversations and and and designing the right future state that the engineers will actually adopt.

Roopinder 9:07

You knew that the Congress committee was gonna talk to you about the maritime, but then as conversation always does now, it ended up being all about AI, right? So that's right. And you were well prepared for that. So you must have seen some of that coming. Oh, the question everybody asked about AI is how is it gonna affect jobs and training that came up, you handle that. Want to go a little bit deeper into that. News right now, especially in tech, is like uh AI is gonna take over so many jobs, right? Is you think it's gonna take away jobs in shipbuilding?

Copilots First Time Quality Less Rework

Brittany 9:44

So actually, my very strong conviction is that AI and shipbuilding is not going to be taking jobs. And the the reality on the ground is almost the opposite, which is like we are in a desperate need for more players on the field, both on the so we need more naval architects, we need more people working for the shipbuilder OEMs, like doing the design. We need loads of more individuals, you know, actually in the back shops, on the dry docks, like actually, you know, performing that that work. And um, I mean, it's it's significant where that talent gap is of what we need to fill in order to meet the demand that has already been, you know, provisioned from the government and otherwise. And so, you know, I can give kind of two examples to make it real from at least from where we're seeing is at least in a manufacturing environment, we're seeing that industrial AI is actually it's reducing time spent on manual and repetitive tasks. So by automating, you know, planning and documentation and analysis, it really does free up the engineers, you know, on the shop floor to focus on more of like the craftsmanship and like the problem-solving skill sets that that are still very much so needed there. The other example that I like to give is that industrial AI is also being used to actually improve first-time quality, right? And so you don't have to walk a shipyard to imagine that oftentimes there's a lot of rework, right? That's any manufacturing environment, right? There's often rework, but just given you can imagine the footprint. These are these shipyards are massive. You have material all over. The complexity for how you execute the work is extreme. Some shipyards are using advanced technology and tools like that Siemens provide, so that you can sort of look at 3D models and you can like, you know, it kind of works with you to execute, but some are still using printed, you know, 2D papers and things like that, where if you have to like reach overhead to fix something or pull something down, you're having to do this massive physical orientation, not only of the thing that you're trying to fix or assemble or whatever it is, but also with the drawing or the instruction, right? You're having to do all these like mental gymnastics. And so there is a lot of, you know, quality and first-time quality. It tends to be a core uh target or KPI for um a lot, at least of my customers. So industrial AI is kind of helping to guide some of these decisions up front, reduce that rework so that that same workforce can actually just start pushing out more output. And frankly, it's reducing burnout, right? Because if you take an employment engagement survey, doing executing rework due to, you know, quality is typically not the top of the list of things that are are on their enjoyability rating for their job. But yeah, so those would be two examples on the on the manufacturing side. Do you want me to share a little more on the on the engineering side as well?

Roopinder 13:01

Or yes, please.

Brittany 13:03

Okay, sure. So um on the engineering side to your point, so a lot of people understand the term copilot now, right? And so when we talk about co-pilot and semen's products, you can imagine, you know, you open up and you're doing designs and you have like a co-pilot interface where you can basically say, Hey, as it turns out, I need this thing in blue, not red, right? Can you advise me on which supplier I should work with and how to update the bomb? And it's like you're you're literally working with a co-pilot to advance a lot of that like engineer in design engineering and then physical engineering activity. And we've seen pretty rapid adoption of those types of capabilities that once again, we don't need fewer engineers doing design. We need we need more people doing this kind of work so that we can increase the throughput on the back end.

Roopinder 13:57

Yeah, and I think we need, I think you tried to get this across that we need more Americans to get into more American companies, more of an American effort into shipbuilding. I think I'm trying to put myself in your shoes, right? And I was thinking uh okay, you're representing Siemens AG. It's part of Siemens AG, it's a German company. You're you're you're in an industry which is heavily foreign, right? Yes, we are making what 1% of the world's ships right now, the US, right? Uh some something very minor, very significant, right? We can't even get our naval ships made in a hurry. Uh I thought the committee was going to ask you, what are you gonna do to bring shipbuilding back to the US? Did you feel like that that didn't really come across? But I wonder if you thought that might have been the motive for this panel.

Digital Thread For National Defense

Brittany 14:53

It definitely um definitely crossed my mind as something that could come up. And you know, what's interesting is that in this space on politics, kind of rebuilding our maritime strength is actually a very um bipartisan topic, right? If you look at some of the legislation and things like that that that's getting um pushed, it's it's all it's all bipartisan sponsorship, right? For the most part, at least, at least the things that I'm aware of, not being a government affairs expert, of course. And so walking in to the hearing, I of course anticipated that I might get different types of questions and things like that. But I have seen in my conversations both from that hearing as well as more broadly on the Hill and at the White House and just kind of in in the DC circles, I would say, that most politicians are actually really interested in this because it's it's creating jobs and it's um and it's frankly, it's it's a critical part of our national defense. So I would say, what's the phrase of, you know, you can't really solve a problem until you name it, right? Or there's a quote from Albert Einstein that's like, if I have an hour, you know, to solve a problem, I want to spend 50 minutes defining what that problem is, you know. And I and I think that what I've observed is that that is a common framework and a mindset across the board, is that people want to know how are you, how is Siemens specifically gonna help? And our response has been we are here to provide that digital backbone software platform that enables all the things upstream, design engineering, all the things downstream for manufacturing. We want to be active participants in helping the government and industry understand how they're gonna meet demand, where there's you know significant supply chain gaps, where there's manufacturing gaps. And of course, we want to be part of the resolution to solve that with our digital twin digital thread technologies and things like that.

Roopinder 17:02

I think if they looked at your LinkedIn profile and you you showed the American flag there behind you, they would have they would not have been of any uh have had any fear. Um I'm not a political analyst either, but but I know enough to know that it is a vital concern our lack of shipbuilding ability. You know, China is running away with it. They have so many ship shipyards, such so many ships in the Navy. Uh North, I think South Korea has the next most, and Japan has a few.

Commercial Military And New Ship Types

Brittany 17:34

The best way that we can actually support national defense is by enabling that digital thread platform so that whichever programs do move forward and whichever suppliers are going to help rally to get those uh built and ready uh to go to war, that everybody is able to do that a little bit more seamlessly and a little bit more quickly. Um, and that is really kind of the power of that digital thread is that you're you're taking that bill of materials, you know, that's based on the requirements that the government's giving you and being translated into these engineering designs, and you're translating it all the way through. Doesn't matter if it's you know within the four walls of an OEM with the supplier, there's a lot of flexibility there, right? But you're basically able to demonstrate that agility no matter which direction or ultimately which platform you're building it for.

Roopinder 18:28

Okay. So Siemens Maritime has supports both commercial, commercial commercial and diff diff and military. Okay.

Brittany 18:38

We do. My my group is um, I think the only group within Siemens Software that has both federal and OEM. Uh we're special.

Roopinder 18:48

Uh my first job offer coming out of school was actually for the Philadelphia Naval Shipyard. Wow. Have you have you been there?

Brittany 18:57

So um I have not actually been to the Philly Yard yet. I'm sure you're familiar with it. They were recently, not even recently anymore, but acquired. Um but yeah, they are doing some amazing things uh there at the Philly Yard.

Roopinder 19:10

Acquired by uh South Korean company, correct?

Brittany 19:14

Hanwa, that's right.

Roopinder 19:16

And which is odd, right? Aren't they the military? They're making ships for the military and it's owned by a foreign company. That's never been done before. That's a first, I believe.

Brittany 19:27

Um that I so the the AUKUS agreement um with Australia and the UK and the US, I would say would be the most adjacent kind of program or a trilateral agreement that um that I would say is uh would would be applicable there.

Consulting To Siemens And Service Mindset

Roopinder 19:44

Okay, yeah. Yes, yes. It reminds me of a little bit of the space program. Like we NASA gave up a lot of its rocket building and then farmed it out to other concerns, not necessarily foreign concerns, although, but private concerns. You said you were in a consulting group, Deloitte, I believe, right?

Brittany 20:02

I was, yeah, at the beginning of my career. And then um, while I was at you know, the the consulting firm, I actually started implementing Team Center and Op Center for industrial customers. And so having done that, you know, I'd been talking about this concept of digital thread for about a decade. And um I felt I felt like I had finally found it. So I actually picked up the phone and called Siemens and said, hey, I, you know, I really I want to be part of this thing that I really truly believe now that I've seen it in action is transforming, you know, engineering in the manufacturing sector. And so I I did that. I've always had, I've always worked with aerospace and defense customers across all of my roles. And, you know, I'm I have uh kind of a somewhat classic American story and that, you know, I really was blessed to to be a first generation, you know, college student. My my my family is is uh comes from a lot of military and you know, don't tell my Navy customers, but uh, but you know, my I come from an Air Force family. And so um, you know, for me, I never had the opportunity to to serve. And so I had always been kind of looking to figure out how I could be part of national our national defense and be part of building that that platform. Um and so it everything just kind of worked out perfectly um in my journey at Siemens to be able to work with the Navy and then to be able to jump into this role um where I still get to support both federal and you know commercial for shipbuilding.

Roopinder 21:38

Who do who did you have to convince? Was it Roland himself that uh you you could do this?

Brittany 21:43

I have I have met him before. Um he is much taller than me. So you know I I do I do look up to him both professionally and and physically.

Roopinder 21:52

Um I I've never felt shorter until I was took a I took a selfie with him, and it's like it's like towering. person.

Brittany 22:00

Yeah. Yeah. But you know what it what is interesting about um you know Siemens being such a big and complex organization is that you know our our software uh business unit specifically is actually headquartered in the US in Plano, Texas. And so it is interesting, you know, just to see how, of course we're a global company, but it's really cool to see how at least our software group does have a very significant presence in the US and a lot of our coders and and code being developed and everything like that is, you know, being built in the US for our US customers.

Roopinder 22:33

So the commercial ships that are being built are they they they vary um they're across the board cruise ships, tankers, cargo ships, big ships that's right there so it's it's big.

Brittany 22:48

And then um you I'm sure you have probably heard that um there's a huge surge now in production of unmanned surface and unmanned underwater vessels as well as well so USVs and UUVs. And so that the footprint of these vessels is not as large as a tanker or a hospital ship or you know anything like that. But it's that has been a huge shift in the US specifically for for design and build.

Roopinder 23:22

How big of a division is this the maritime division of Siemens?

Women In Manufacturing And Closing

Brittany 23:27

It's pretty it's pretty big. I mean our team in the US is like essentially hundreds of people who support maritime is that in in the same headquarters as the software division in Plano we're not all um located in Plano necessarily but it's the same it's the same division. So digital industry software yes so we have um you know product development teams we have you know pre-sales we have services engagement teams right as well as of course like sales teams and things like that.

Roopinder 23:59

I just finished reading this really good book about um women in tech. It's called Exit Interview and it's about a woman who read a division in um in Amazon and she oftentimes found herself the only woman in the room. Yeah. Does that happen to you?

Brittany 24:18

So first of all I will say kudos to you for reading that book. I haven't read it yet I would say from from my perspective statistically speaking of course manufacturing historically has been um more heavy uh on the male side but I will say that from my perspective it's not it's not really the the lens or the qualifier that I look at when um kind of forming the teams you know we really focus on um defining like culture and creating like high performing teams. So I have found that there's a lot of strengths and uniqueness in being a woman in manufacturing that I'm able to tap into and it ties back to what my real passion is, which is making work better on the deck plate. And in order to do that, you know, we have to be focused on what makes people tick and what's going to resonate to be able to support them to actually adopt you know technology. And I've definitely found that that that has um been a great honor and also a great a great strength of being being a woman in this space.

Roopinder 25:21

If you heard of Kara Swisher she's she's probably one of the best tech reporters I know and she's oftentimes talking about this very subject with women in tech there just isn't enough of them.

Brittany 25:33

I'm part of a book club um so we read one one book a month and so I'm always looking to see what the good books are out there so that when it's my turn to pick that you know I l I land the plane well with my book club so oh I'm glad to know somebody else who who reads it's a it's a it's a dying sort of thing so keep let's keep that alive. Let's keep it up.

Roopinder 25:55

Yeah Brittany so nice to speak to you thanks so much for educating me on what Siemens does in the maritime division. I'm really happy to meet you thanks so much have a good rest of the day thanks for listening to ENGtechnica TV if you'd like to tell your story on this podcast contact me at Roopinder at engtechnica.com or message me on LinkedIn