Microsoft
Software : Cloud Computing : General
Microsoft Cloud for Manufacturing is designed to deliver capabilities that support the core processes and requirements of the industry. These end-to-end manufacturing cloud solutions include released and new capabilities that help securely connect people, assets, workflow, and business processes, empowering organizations to be more resilient.
Assembly Line
Sanofi uses the industrial metaverse to revolutionize training and operational efficiency
Sanofi is a leader in the development and manufacturing of both prescription and over-the-counter medications. To meet an increased demand for Sanofi pharmaceuticals, the Paris-based organization needed to find a way to make its production lines more streamlined while training and onboarding more operators. Sanofi launched a pilot project in it packaging workshop in Lisieux, France to work in the metaverse using Microsoft HoloLens 2 with Microsoft Dynamics 365 Guides and Microsoft Dynamics 365 Remote Assist. The aim was to streamline employee training procedures, enhance operator efficiency, and integrate a digital approach within the manufacturing environment. Using HoloLens 2, Sanofi has reduced training time for new operators from eight weeks to six weeks. The organization is also using HoloLens 2 for remote maintenance and troubleshooting, enabling quicker resolution of equipment issues. With the success of the pilot, Sanofi is looking to expand the solution across its value chain, with a specific emphasis on data analysis.
Bringing Scalable AI to the Edge with Databricks and Azure DevOps
The ML-optimized runtime in Databricks contains popular ML frameworks such as PyTorch, TensorFlow, and scikit-learn. In this solution accelerator, we will build a basic Random Forest ML model in Databricks that will later be deployed to edge devices to execute inferences directly on the manufacturing shop floor. The focus will essentially be the deployment of ML Model built on Databricks to edge devices.
Why will intelligent digital twins become an industrial manufacturing must-have?
For an illustrative example, look at a large thermal processing equipment manufacturer. With a legacy of serving clients across 40 countries for the past 60 years, the manufacturer faced critical challenges, including expensive and time-consuming diagnostics of on-field equipment and complexity in managing equipment monitoring software for multiple customers.
To address these problems, the company partnered with Saviant Consulting to build a platform to create digital twins on Microsoft Azure for its customers’ melt shops. Saviant designed a multitenant, loosely coupled architecture to create this scalable platform, which helped reduce overheads while also managing multiple equipment for its customers.
IBM Consulting Collaborates with Microsoft to Help Companies Accelerate Adoption of Generative AI
IBM (NYSE: IBM) is expanding its collaboration with Microsoft to help joint clients accelerate the deployment of generative AI - and deliver a new offering that will provide clients with the expertise and technology they need to innovate their business processes and scale generative AI effectively. IBM Consulting, in collaboration with Microsoft, will focus on helping clients to implement and scale Azure OpenAI Service. The new IBM Consulting Azure OpenAI Service offering, which is available on Azure Marketplace, is a fully managed AI service that allows developers and data scientists to apply powerful large language models, including their GPT and Codex series. It aims to help businesses define an adoption strategy and an initial set of specific and value-add generative AI use cases.
Rondo Energy Secures $60 Million from Global Giants and Leading Climate Investors to Speed Industrial Decarbonization
Rondo Energy, a leading provider of zero-carbon industrial heat and power, has raised $60 million in a new financing planned to speed the rollout of Rondo Heat Batteries (RHBs) worldwide and to transform the global energy storage market. Rio Tinto, Aramco Ventures, SABIC, SCG, TITAN, and SEEIT have joined Rondo’s Strategic Investor Advisory Board (SIAB).
Ansys Accelerates Innovation by Expanding AI Offerings with New Virtual Assistant
Expanding artificial intelligence (AI) integration across its simulation portfolio and customer community, Ansys (NASDAQ: ANSS) announced the limited beta release of AnsysGPT, a multilingual, conversational, AI virtual assistant set to revolutionize the way Ansys customers receive support. Developed using state-of-the-art ChatGPT technology available via the Microsoft Azure OpenAI Service, AnsysGPT uses well-sourced Ansys public data to answer technical questions concerning Ansys products, relevant physics, and engineering topics within one comprehensive tool.
Expected in early 2024, AnsysGPT will optimize technical support for customers — delivering information and solutions more efficiently, furthering the democratization of simulation. While currently in beta testing with select customers and channel partners, upon its full release next year AnsysGPT will provide easily accessible 24/7 technical support through the Ansys website. Unlike general AI virtual assistants that use unsupported information, AnsysGPT is trained using Ansys data to generate tailored, applicable responses drawn from reliable Ansys resources including, but not limited to, Ansys Innovation Courses, technical documentation, blog articles, and how-to-videos. Strong controls were put in place to ensure that no proprietary information of any kind was used during the training process, and that customer inputs are not stored or used to train the system in any way.
Sight Machine Factory CoPilot Democratizes Industrial Data With Generative AI
Sight Machine Inc. today announced the release of Factory CoPilot, democratizing industrial data through the power of generative artificial intelligence. By integrating Sight Machine’s Manufacturing Data Platform with Microsoft Azure OpenAI Service, Factory CoPilot brings unprecedented ease of access to manufacturing problem solving, analysis and reporting.
Using a natural language user interface similar to ChatGPT, Factory CoPilot offers an intuitive, “ask the expert” experience for all manufacturing stakeholders, regardless of data proficiency. In response to a single question, Factory CoPilot can automatically summarize all relevant data and information about production in real-time (e.g., for daily meetings) and generate user-friendly reports, emails, charts and other content (in any language) about the performance of any machine, line or plant across the manufacturing enterprise, based on contextualized data in the Sight Machine platform.
Microsoft Cloud for Manufacturing: Tackling data accessibility in manufacturing alongside partners
I’m very excited about all the updates being shared at Microsoft Inspire 2023, particularly about the announcement of the new AI Cloud Partner Program (MACPP) and the additional offerings and benefits this brings for partners. Under the MACPP, I’m thrilled to announce that we will be including manufacturing partner solutions through new independent software vendor (ISV) designations.
This designation represents our commitment to bringing the best partner solutions to our customers and provides a way for customers to identify proven partner solutions aligned with the Microsoft Cloud and our industry clouds. The designation validates that our partners’ solutions meet the high standards of data accessibility specific to the manufacturing industry.
📊 Accelerating Innovation at JetBlue Using Databricks
The role of data and in particular analytics, AI and ML is key for airlines to provide a seamless experience for customers while maintaining efficient operations for optimum business goals. For a single flight, for example, from New York to London, hundreds of decisions have to be made based on factors encompassing customers, flight crews, aircraft sensors, live weather and live air traffic control (ATC) data. A large disruption such as a brutal winter storm can impact thousands of flights across the U.S. Therefore it is vital for airlines to depend on real-time data and AI & ML to make proactive real time decisions.
JetBlue has sped AI and ML deployments across a wide range of use cases spanning four lines of business, each with its own AI and ML team. The following are the fundamental functions of the business lines:
- Commercial Data Science (CDS) - Revenue growth
- Operations Data Science (ODS) - Cost reduction
- AI & ML engineering – Go-to-market product deployment optimization
- Business Intelligence – Reporting enterprise scaling and support
Each business line supports multiple strategic products that are prioritized regularly by JetBlue leadership to establish KPIs that lead to effective strategic outcomes.
Transition from Preventive to Predictive Maintenance Using Time Series Data with MAJiK Visual Factory and InfluxDB
Microsoft Azure IoT Edge and Azure IoT Hub enhance the data transport capabilities of MAJiK’s Visual Factory systems. These Azure services send data from the edge to the cloud through an encrypted connection, ensuring secure data transfer. Once the data reaches the cloud, Azure’s Event Grid, Event Hub, and Service Bus services manage different aspects of data transport. InfluxDB plays a crucial role in observability and training of machine learning models. Given the high volume of data needed for training, this process takes place in the cloud.
As soon as a model training is successful, the Microsoft cloud ecosystem sends the model back down to the edge via a containerized application. There, it works against real-time data in the plant.
☢️ Helion announces world’s first fusion energy purchase agreement with Microsoft
Helion Energy (Helion) today announced an agreement to provide Microsoft electricity from its first fusion power plant. Constellation will serve as the power marketer and will manage transmission for the project. The plant is expected to be online by 2028 and will target power generation of 50 MW or greater after a 1-year ramp up period. The planned operational date for this first of its kind facility is significantly sooner than typical projections for deployment of commercial fusion power. The development of a commercial fusion power facility is a crucial step in the transition to a sustainable energy future and will not only help Microsoft to achieve its goal of being carbon negative by 2030, but will also support the development of a new clean energy source for the world.
♻️ AMP Robotics Raises Additional Series C Investment From Microsoft Climate Innovation Fund
AMP Robotics Corp. (“AMP”), a pioneer in artificial intelligence (AI), robotics, and infrastructure for the waste and recycling industry, has received financing from Microsoft’s Climate Innovation Fund. This latest investment brings AMP’s Series C round, led by Congruent Ventures and Wellington Management, to a total of more than $99 million.
LS Electric, Microsoft to jointly develop smart factory
LS Electric Co., South Korean manufacturer of power and industrial automation equipment, has signed a partnership agreement with Microsoft to develop intelligent and autonomous factory solutions.
Both companies will focus on improving data connectivity in intelligent factories, generating data insights for production facilities, and conducting power efficiency analysis in production lines. LS Electric and MS will also explore the use of Azure Synapse Analytics and Azure Machine Learning services for advanced manufacturing environments and the development of new business models based on smart energy and power data. The collaboration will extend beyond smart factories to encompass digital transformation (DX) businesses.
Last year, LS Electric worked with Microsoft to enhance inspection and noise analysis in the production line of the Cheongju plant, which was recognized as a “lighthouse factory” by the World Economic Forum. The partnership resulted in reduced defect rates and increased productivity through the use of deep learning technology on the Azure platform.
BAE Systems and Microsoft join forces to equip defence programmes with innovative cloud technology
BAE Systems and Microsoft have signed a strategic agreement aiming to support faster and easier development, deployment and management of digital defence capabilities in an increasingly data centric world. The collaboration brings together BAE Systems’ knowledge of building complex digital systems for militaries and governments with Microsoft’s approach to developing applications using its Azure Cloud platform.
Since starting the collaboration, BAE Systems and Microsoft have worked on three successful initiatives, highlighting the benefits of modern cloud software in the defence sector. These projects included enhancing real-time tactical naval intelligence through access to more dynamic data sources; development of secure software to deliver real-time updates to air platforms; and the creation of a digital thread to support the maintenance of maritime platforms from concept to disposal.
Siemens and Microsoft drive industrial productivity with generative artificial intelligence
Siemens and Microsoft are harnessing the collaborative power of generative artificial intelligence (AI) to help industrial companies drive innovation and efficiency across the design, engineering, manufacturing and operational lifecycle of products. To enhance cross-functional collaboration, the companies are integrating Siemens’ Teamcenter® software for product lifecycle management (PLM) with Microsoft’s collaboration platform Teams and the language models in Azure OpenAI Service as well as other Azure AI capabilities. At Hannover Messe, the two technology leaders will demonstrate how generative AI can enhance factory automation and operations through AI-powered software development, problem reporting and visual quality inspection.
NVIDIA Expands Omniverse Cloud to Power Industrial Digitalization
NVIDIA today announced that NVIDIA Omniverse™ Cloud, a platform-as-a-service that enables companies to unify digitalization across their core product and business processes, is now available to select enterprises. NVIDIA has selected Microsoft Azure as the first cloud service provider for Omniverse Cloud, giving enterprises access to the full-stack suite of Omniverse software applications and NVIDIA OVX™ infrastructure, with the scale and security of Azure cloud services.
Microsoft and Rockwell Automation collaborate on digital solutions for manufacturers
Microsoft and Rockwell Automation believe well-designed digital solutions can address operational, system, workforce, and scale needs at the same time. That’s why we have partnered to build digital solutions that deliver transformational outcomes with immediate value and long-term scale, resilience, and agility. By working together, we can leverage our respective strengths and expertise to develop solutions that meet the needs of manufacturers.
Microsoft and Rockwell Automation are jointly delivering edge-to-cloud products that help you manage and make sense of the data in your factory. The result is actionable insights that can improve your business operations.
ChatGPT for Robotics: Design Principles and Model Abilities
ChatGPT unlocks a new robotics paradigm, and allows a (potentially non-technical) user to sit on the loop, providing high-level feedback to the large language model (LLM) while monitoring the robot’s performance. By following our set of design principles, ChatGPT can generate code for robotics scenarios. Without any fine-tuning we leverage the LLM’s knowledge to control different robots form factors for a variety of tasks. In our work we show multiple examples of ChatGPT solving robotics puzzles, along with complex robot deployments in the manipulation, aerial, and navigation domains.
Ansys Expands Cloud-Based Simulation Solutions Through Extended Collaboration with Microsoft
Ansys (NASDAQ: ANSS) is extending its long-term strategic collaboration with Microsoft to accelerate virtual product design through expanded cloud-based access to Ansys’ simulation solutions and computer-aided engineering (CAE) tools. As a next step, Ansys will develop a new offering that will enable customers to launch Ansys products using their Azure enrollment and connect third-party tools more easily.
Green Steel Technology Company Boston Metal Announces $120M Series C Financing Led by ArcelorMittal
Boston Metal, a company developing technology to fully decarbonize steel production, today announced the $120 million first close of Series C fundraising led by multinational steel company, ArcelorMittal S.A. (NYSE: MT). Microsoft’s Climate Innovation Fund and SiteGround Capital also joined as new investors in this round, alongside current investors.
Boston Metal’s patented Molten Oxide Electrolysis (MOE) process is being commercialized to produce both green steel and high-value metals, such as tin and niobium. The Series C funds will expand the production of green steel at the company’s pilot facility outside Boston and will support the site selection and preliminary design of its first green steel plant. The new resources will also support the construction and commissioning of a manufacturing facility for high-value metals at the company’s Brazilian subsidiary, Boston Metal do Brasil.
Maersk embraces edge computing to revolutionize supply chain
Gavin Laybourne, global CIO of Maersk’s APM Terminals business, is embracing cutting-edge technologies to accelerate and fortify the global supply chain, working with technology giants to implement edge computing, private 5G networks, and thousands of IoT devices at its terminals to elevate the efficiency, quality, and visibility of the container ships Maersk uses to transport cargo across the oceans.
“Two to three years ago, we put everything on the cloud, but what we’re doing now is different,” Laybourne says. “The cloud, for me, is not the North Star. We must have the edge. We need real-time instruction sets for machines [container handling equipment at container terminals in ports] and then we’ll use cloud technologies where the data is not time-sensitive.”
Laybourne’s IT team is working with Microsoft to move cloud data to the edge, where containers are removed from ships by automated cranes and transferred to predefined locations in the port. To date, Laybourne and his team have migrated about 40% of APM Terminals’ cloud data to the edge, with a target to hit 80% by the end of 2023 at all operated terminals. Maersk has also been working with AI pioneer Databricks to develop algorithms to make its IoT devices and automated processes smarter. The company’s data scientists have built machine learning models in-house to improve safety and identify cargo. Data scientists will some day up the ante with advanced models to make all processes autonomous.
Lockheed Martin, Microsoft announce landmark agreement on classified cloud, advanced technologies for Department of Defense
Lockheed Martin is the first defense industrial base member to use Microsoft’s newest National Industrial Security Program (NISP) framework for air-gapped clouds after a year-long pilot. Work on developing the classified and unclassified cloud environments is already underway, with expectations for the project to be operational in 2023.
Microsoft’s first-of-its-kind technology will allow Lockheed Martin to dynamically scale IT demands under authorized guidance and directly operate mission workloads inside Azure Government Secret, including highly restricted special programs.
Mercedes-Benz and Microsoft collaborate to boost efficiency, resilience and sustainability in car production
Mercedes-Benz production staff gets access to the MO360 Data Platform via a self-service portal available on any company device including tablets, smartphones and laptops. Its visualization with Microsoft Power BI provides a what-you-see-is-what-you-get experience, allowing employees to become data workers with the ability to model and correlate data. The Teams Walkie Talkie app provides workers with an instant push-to-talk (PTT) communication on their business phones — no extra device needed.
With the MO360 Data Platform, teams at Factory 56 have shortened their daily shop floor meeting by 30%. In addition, they identify priority tasks to optimize production workflows within two minutes, which took up to four hours prior to the introduction of the platform. From team leads and process engineers to shop and plant managers, employees are encouraged to contribute new use cases to drive process innovation with Microsoft Power Platform.
Capgemini and Microsoft collaborate to offer Digital Twin Solutions
Capgemini today announced that it is collaborating with Microsoft to deliver a first-of-its kind, cloud-native, serverless Azure-based digital twin platform, called ReflectIoD. This secure, highly scalable platform will leverage best-in-class architecture and technological components from the Azure suite to help transform an organization’s operations and maintenance efficiency, enabling intelligent industry and driving sustainable business value. It will also enable enterprises to meet the ever-growing needs of standardized brownfields management[1] throughout their life cycle and across ecosystems.
Sight Machine Blueprint Enables Automated Data Labeling and Comprehensive Analysis of All Manufacturing Data
Sight Machine, creator of the data foundation for manufacturing, today announced that it has released Sight Machine Blueprint, a tool developed in collaboration with NVIDIA and Microsoft that provides manufacturers with high-speed, automated data labeling, mapping data tags to plant assets and the context they need to interpret their plant data. Blueprint makes it possible, for the first time, for manufacturers to analyze all their plant data, leading to improved outcomes in throughput, quality and sustainability.
“Microsoft Azure Machine Learning, combined with Sight Machine and advanced technology from NVIDIA, provides the infrastructure to easily scale GPU-based machine learning pipelines,” said Indranil Sircar, CTO, Manufacturing at Microsoft. “This combination in Sight Machine Blueprint will help eliminate manufacturers’ massive time drain from manually labeling data, and enable them to tap into the full wealth of data at their fingertips for business impact through true analytics-driven decision-making.”
Microsoft open sources its ‘farm of the future’ toolkit
Fifth-generation farmer Andrew Nelson is adding a new bumper crop to that bounty: Data. He gathers it from sensors in the soil, drones in the sky and satellites in space. They feed Nelson information about his farm at distinct points, every day, all year long — temperature variations, soil moisture and nutrient levels, plant health and more.
Nelson in turn feeds that data into Project FarmVibes, a new suite of farm-focused technologies from Microsoft Research. Starting today, Microsoft will open source these tools so researchers and data scientists — and the rare farmer like Nelson, who is also a software engineer — can build upon them to turn agricultural data into action that can help boost yields and cut costs. The first open-source release is FarmVibes.AI. It is a sample set of algorithms aimed at inspiring the research and data science community to advance data-driven agriculture. Nelson is using this AI-powered toolkit to help guide decisions at every phase of farming, from before seeds go into the ground until well after harvest.
Novo Nordisk and Microsoft collaborate to accelerate drug discovery and development using big data and artificial intelligence
Novo Nordisk and Microsoft have entered a new strategic collaboration to combine Microsoft’s computational services, cloud and artificial intelligence (AI) with Novo Nordisk’s drug discovery, development and data science capabilities.
Through the partnership, Microsoft is providing AI technology, foundational science models and expertise and is working alongside Novo Nordisk’s data scientists and domain experts from early research and development areas to accelerate Novo Nordisk’s R&D.
CommScope Collaborates with Microsoft to Advance Industrial Manufacturing with Private Wireless Network Solution
CommScope (NASDAQ: COMM) announced today that it has collaborated with Microsoft to create a converged private wireless network solution, enabling new low-latency and mobile applications to transform industrial manufacturing.
CommScope successfully deployed the combined solution—using Microsoft Azure private MEC and CommScope CBRS access points—in its own manufacturing innovation center in Shakopee, Minnesota. Through this cloud-connected, low-latency private wireless network, CommScope is already improving both the operational efficiency and manufacturing agility of its facilities.
Cosmo Tech collaborates with Microsoft to drive strategic sustainability outcomes with Simulation Digital Twins
Cosmo Tech is collaborating with Microsoft to integrate Microsoft Azure Digital Twins capabilities with the addition of its strategic 360° Simulation Digital Twin technology. The combined technologies enable Microsoft’s enterprise customers to monitor systems in near real-time and to simulate the evolution of complex organization in uncertain environments over time. This will allow strategic optimizations at all levels of enterprise planning, decision making and financial functions; enabling outcomes that are robust, resilient, and sustainable.
Connecting Factories Seamlessly with Azure and MQTT
HoloLens 2 helps Novo Nordisk employees see work in new ways
The pharmaceutical giant, a leader in the global production of diabetes medicine, has been pioneering the use of emerging digital technologies for everything from simplifying floor operations in their manufacturing facilities across the globe to conducting virtual site visits from thousands of miles away. Some of those solutions include Microsoft HoloLens 2, Microsoft Dynamics 365 Remote Assist, Microsoft Dynamics 365 Guides and Microsoft Power Platform. This includes introducing what is known as augmented instructions, via HoloLens 2, to shop floor employees, providing them with new possibilities to support both process performance and getting onboarded for new procedures.
Industrial dataOps capabilities to truly scale Simulation Digital Twins
For some time, the notion of digital twins has been ubiquitous in exemplifying the potential of digital technology for heavy-asset industries. With a digital representation of a real-world system of assets or processes, we can apply simulation and optimization techniques to deliver prescriptive decision support to end-users.
Simulation Digital Twins help industries to make decisions in an increasingly complex & uncertain environment, to balance competing constraints (revenue, cost, efficiency, resiliency, carbon footprint, ++), and to react quickly and adapt with agility to real-world changes.
In this article we are describing solutions that combine the capabilities of Microsoft Azure Digital Twins, Cognite Data Fusion and Cosmotech Simulation Digital Twins. In an integrated solution, Azure Digital Twins provides a digital twin model that reflects real time state from sensors and other real time source and orchestrates event processing. Cognite Data Fusion (CDF) delivers integration of schemas and metadata from IT, OT and ET data sources, including the generation of models and twin graphs for Azure Digital Twins. The Cosmotech Simulation Digital Twin platform adds deep simulation capabilities in a scalable, open framework.
Nokia strengthens partnership with Microsoft to enhance performance at the mission critical industrial edge
Nokia today announced plans to integrate Microsoft Azure Arc capabilities into the Nokia MX Industrial Edge (MXIE) platform, unlocking the potential of mission critical applications for Industry 4.0 use cases. Through the integration, Nokia MXIE and private wireless solution customers have seamless access to the full Azure ecosystem offering on MXIE.
Aimed to support industries including automotive, manufacturing, energy, logistics and government, the powerful combination will enable use cases by allowing customers to run applications in the traditional cloud, as well as directly on their premises. Collaboration in these areas will provide numerous benefits such as increasing worker safety through AI and automation, while decreasing the amount of needed backhaul with local data processing.
Kawasaki Heavy Industries (Satya Nadella 2022 Build Keynote)
Building digital twins, mixed reality and metaverse apps for businesses
Seeq Announces Expanded Microsoft Azure Machine Learning Support
Seeq Corporation, a leader in manufacturing and Industrial Internet of Things advanced analytics software, announced today additional integration support for Microsoft Azure Machine Learning. This new Seeq Azure Add-on, announced at Microsoft Ignite 2021, an annual conference for developers and IT professionals hosted by Microsoft, enables process manufacturing organizations to deploy machine learning models from Azure Machine Learning as Add-ons in Seeq Workbench. The result is machine learning algorithms and innovations developed by IT departments can be operationalized so frontline OT employees can enhance their decision making and improve production, sustainability indicators, and business outcomes.
Announcing the Microsoft Cloud for Manufacturing preview
The Microsoft Cloud for Manufacturing brings the best outcome-driven solutions and capabilities from Microsoft and our partners to accelerate time-to-value for our customers in an end-to-end, holistic, and scalable way. By connecting intelligent, integrated cloud, and edge capabilities of the Microsoft stack to the highest value manufacturing scenarios, we are creating a flywheel of innovation that helps businesses increase asset and frontline worker productivity in safe and secure factories, enable remote selling and always-on service, and unlock cloud-based innovation—all with the utmost trust, compliance, privacy, and transparency.
I am particularly excited about how we are integrating Microsoft Teams frontline workers and mixed reality across these capabilities. This will increase productivity in hybrid work scenarios, and allow insights from securely connected IoT assets and products to be integrated into workflows and business processes in Microsoft Dynamics 365 Business Applications and partner solutions.
AWS, Google, Microsoft apply expertise in data, software to manufacturing
As manufacturing becomes digitized, Google’s methodologies that were developed for the consumer market are becoming relevant for industry, said Wee, who previously worked in the semiconductor industry as an industrial engineer. “We believe we’re at a point in time where these technologies—primarily the analytics and AI area—that have been very difficult to use for the typical industrial engineer are becoming so easy to use on the shop floor,” he said. “That’s where we believe our competitive differentiation lies.”
Meanwhile, Ford is also selectively favoring human brain power over software to analyze data and turning more and more to in-house coders than applications vendors. “The solution will be dependent upon the application,” Mikula said. “Sometimes it will be software, and sometimes it’ll be a data analyst who crunches the data sources. We would like to move to solutions that are more autonomous and driven by machine learning and artificial intelligence. The goal is to be less reliant on purchased SaaS.”
A Digital Factory Approach to Data-driven Management in Factories
Yokogawa’s solutions and know-how play an important role in accelerating digital transformation (DX) of operational technology (OT) in the manufacturing industry. When proposing these solutions and know-how to customers, it is persuasive to be able to show that Yokogawa has actually improved productivity in its own factories using its OT operations data. This specific example will help customers to understand the effectiveness of the proposal. To achieve data-driven management with OT operation data, three requirements must be satisfied: (1) OT Data Lake, which is a framework for gathering operational data from Yokogawa’s factories worldwide into a single database and improving productivity on a global scale, (2) AI optimization and automation that use operational data and images, and (3) remote operation that ensures the continuity of business even when people’s access is restricted, for example, due to the COVID-19 pandemic. Yokogawa defines a factory that satisfies these three items as a Digital Factory and is working hard to make its own factories as such. Although this approach is one of Yokogawa’s Internal DX measures, the results can be used to develop know-how for External DX, which will increase value for customers, expedite DX in existing businesses, create new DX businesses, and strengthen Yokogawa’s presence in DX. This paper introduces Yokogawa’s approach to Internal DX, its roadmap, and progress toward external DX.
PLCs improve predictive maintenance
There is no doubt PLC technology is already strongly established on the plant floor. However, by embedding IT protocols, Cloud connectivity, and security features into today’s PLCs, it is possible to gather data that may have existed idly and use it to provide a much stronger idea as to what condition devices and machines are in to prevent unplanned downtime.
Integrating Falkonry with Azure IoT
Falkonry Clue applies advanced analytics to multivariate time-series data to discover meaningful patterns. This valuable operational data is supplied to Clue’s powerful AI engine by leveraging Microsoft Azure’s IoT infrastructure. Clue is designed to fit seamlessly into Azure’s reference architecture thereby easing the integration process.
Connecting the plant to the cloud, the Azure IoT Hub acts as a bi-directional communications brain for all connected IoT devices – managing data transfers, updates, setting up credentials for every device, and defining access control policies. These connected devices include OPC UA enabled sources such as most SCADA systems that support the MQTT protocol for data transfer.
How Honeywell's CEO is turning the legacy manufacturer into a SaaS player
Cumulatively, it marked a significant step forward in Adamczyk’s vision to turn Honeywell from a legacy industrial manufacturer into a top software provider for sectors like real estate, life sciences and aviation.
“The one common fiber across all our businesses is we are a controls company,” he told Protocol at an event on Tuesday. “When you’re a controls company, you’re connected to everything, you’re connected to all the systems in that building, in that aircraft. We use that data to drive controls, but we could use that data to drive energy savings, to drive efficiency.”
Introducing Microsoft Cloud for Manufacturing
What makes the Microsoft Cloud for Manufacturing unique is our commitment to industry-specific standards and communities, such as the Open Manufacturing Platform, the OPC Foundation, and the Digital Twins Consortium, as well as the co-innovation with our rich ecosystem of partners.
Evolution of control systems with artificial intelligence
Control systems have continuously evolved over decades, and artificial intelligence (AI) technologies are helping advance the next generation of some control systems.
The proportional-integral-derivative (PID) controller can be interpreted as a layering of capabilities: the proportional term points toward the signal, the integral term homes in on the setpoint and the derivative term can minimize overshoot.
Although the controls ecosystem may present a complex web of interrelated technologies, it can also be simplified by viewing it as ever-evolving branches of a family tree. Each control system technology offers its own characteristics not available in prior technologies. For example, feed forward improves PID control by predicting controller output, and then uses the predictions to separate disturbance errors from noise occurrences. Model predictive control (MPC) adds further capabilities to this by layering predictions of future control action results and controlling multiple correlated inputs and outputs. The latest evolution of control strategies is the adoption of AI technologies to develop industrial controls.
Augmented Reality Gets Pandemic Boost
Augmented reality, which superimposes digital content onto a user’s view of the real world, became more valuable for some companies such as Mercedes-Benz USA and L’Oréal SA last year amid social distancing requirements and lockdowns. The companies are using the technology to provide assistance for employees and consumers in real-time, without needing to be physically present.
Intel Problems
The misplaced optimism is twofold: first there is the fact that eight years later Intel has again appointed a new CEO (Pat Gelsinger), not to replace the one I was writing about (Brian Krzanich), but rather his successor (Bob Swan). Clearly the opportunity was not seized. What is more concerning is that the question is no longer about seizing an opportunity but about survival, and it is the United States that has the most to lose.
Cognite Collaborates With Microsoft to Transform Industry Through Digitalization and Becomes Global Independent Software Vendor (ISV)
Cognite announced it is working with Microsoft to catalyze the full-scale digital transformation of heavy-asset industries. The Cognite Data Fusion platform, hosted on Microsoft Azure, will deliver industrial data operations and OT/IT data contextualization for hybrid AI development, combining human and Artificial Intelligence to collectively achieve superior results and create faster time to value.
This collaboration builds on the common goal to create transformation through digitalization as demonstrated by Microsoft’s recent commitment to The Center for Fourth Industrial Revolution for the Ocean (C4IR), and the Ocean Data Platform (ODP), which is also powered by Cognite technology. ODP is the open and collaborative platform that harnesses the power of data liberation and contextualization connecting data, people and technology for a healthy ocean and is run on Cognite Data Fusion. ODP is a cornerstone of Microsoft’s water sustainability commitment. Both companies are committed to technology-based systems to improve ocean health.