Microsoft Cloud for Manufacturing: Tackling data accessibility in manufacturing alongside partners

Over the past few years, Microsoft has collaborated with thousands of manufacturing customers, along with our partners. Through various projects, we have sought to understand the hurdles our customers face and explore how the Microsoft Cloud can provide incremental value in an environment of macro-economic headwinds.  

We recognize that each manufacturing customer is at a unique stage of their transformation journey, but all of them rely on a diverse ecosystem of technology capabilities from vendors with deep industry expertise. We believe that where we can add most value is by aiding customers in consolidating their data from this multifaceted ecosystem of solutions, ensuring that it is not only accessible but also secure.  

Microsoft has an unmatched set of deep technological capabilities that are already familiar to users across organizations, ranging from modern work to low-code and no-code, to data and AI. Bringing these technologies to life in an industry as complex and diverse as manufacturing requires deep domain expertise. Rather than trying to do this on our own, we believe in the capabilities of our partners to bring the value of the Microsoft stack to the industry. 

New opportunities for partners with the Microsoft AI Cloud Partner Program

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.

Our customers tell us that data accessibility is their number one priority, especially as they look to adopt AI technologies at scale across the value chain. The new ISV designation will ensure customers can access data generated through their own applications, certified partner solutions, and Microsoft Cloud solutions to improve operational efficiency and data visibility.

This focus on data accessibility and closer collaboration with partners signals a new stage for Microsoft Cloud for Manufacturing. We are open for business and ready to tackle our customers’ biggest challenges with a robust ecosystem of partner solutions, complemented by the security and scalability of the Microsoft Cloud and Microsoft products.  

We want to thank our first wave of partners who are bringing their transformative solutions and services to Microsoft Cloud for Manufacturing:  

Solutions:

Annata—Annata 365 Ansys—Ansys Digital Twins Models AVEVA—AVEVA Data Hub Blue Yonder—Blue Yonder Supply Chain Planning & Operations IBM—Maximo on Azure  PTC—ThingWorx Digital Performance Management, Windchill+  Rescale—ScaleX® Enterprise on Azure  Rockwell—Rockwell Automation industrial IoT platform  Siemens—Teamcenter  Sight Machine—Sight Machine on Azure  Sitecore—Sitecore Content Hub Tulip Interfaces—Tulip frontline operations platform

Systems integrators:

Accenture | Avanade  Capgemini  DXC  EY  Fujitsu  HCLTech PwC  TCS  Wipro

Find these partner solutions, and much more on Microsoft AppSource.

About Microsoft Cloud for Manufacturing

Microsoft Cloud for Manufacturing brings the best of Microsoft and our partners together to jointly accelerate the digital transformation in manufacturing, unlocking engineering and design innovation with cloud computing and AI, building a more resilient supply chain to anticipate risks, enabling intelligent factories, and helping modernize the customer experience with the latest digital technologies. Manufacturers rely on an ecosystem of many different industry solutions from different vendors. Microsoft Cloud for Manufacturing orchestrates this complex ecosystem of solutions, delivering transparent, efficient, and interoperable processes, to democratize data insights, and foster collaboration across the value chain. 

• Enable intelligent factories: Enable the intelligent factory of the future by using the Internet of Things (IoT), data analytics, AI, and cloud connectivity to extract critical data from across operational technology (OT) and information technology (IT) to drive improvements in overall equipment efficiency, operations visibility, and sustainability. Implement AI-driven cost optimization use cases like predictive maintenance or autonomous machine optimization at scale. Improve the quality of your products by rolling out computer vision models to detect defects, analyzing machine data for root cause analysis, and sharing real-time production insights back to design and engineering. Connect your frontline workers with communication and collaboration tools to onboard and upskill them faster.  

• Resilient manufacturing supply chain: Build a resilient and sustainable manufacturing supply chain by holistically analyzing your organization’s production and operations data, your multi tier supplier data, and market signals with the advanced analytics and AI capabilities embedded into the Microsoft Dynamics 365 Supply Chain Management platform. Gain real-time visibility into the supply chain to better predict and manage potential risks. Optimize planning processes end-to-end, use data and AI to improve demand forecasting models, and optimize inventory levels. Increase customer service and satisfaction levels with warehouse automation and intelligent fulfillment systems, all of these while tracking and reducing the carbon footprint. 

• Unlock innovation and introduce new products: Unlock innovation and introduce new products more efficiently reducing costs without sacrificing quality and function. Evolve your technology roadmap to adopt industrial metaverse capabilities like AI, mixed reality, digital twins, and edge-to-cloud, creating a digital loop of your assets and operations. Streamline product development through cloud-based computer-aided design and product lifecycle management applications, use high performance computing to power simulations for digital verification and validation, and roll out generative AI to augment your design and engineering processes. Use software-defined products to create digital feedback loops, gather usage insights, and open new business models with a digital services ecosystem. 

• Modernize manufacturing customer experience: Modernize the overall customer experience by helping your organization’s marketers, sellers, and service agents better understand customer needs and create delightful digital experiences with data analytics, conversational AI, remote collaboration, and mixed reality. Empower sales teams to close new and recurring revenue with speed and predictability with a flexible and comprehensive cloud-based customer relationship management (CRM) platform. Attract new customers, qualify high-value prospects, and build knowledge of your most impactful personas by gaining a 360-degree view of your customers. Turn your service operations into a profit center and expand the reliability of your product lines with cutting-edge mixed reality and remote collaboration capabilities.  

Learn more

To go deeper into Microsoft Cloud for Manufacturing capabilities, visit our website. 

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Source: Microsoft Industry Blog