Optimizing factory operations with Microsoft Cloud for Manufacturing

Manufacturing is an industry known for generating data from a wide variety of sources. From machines and sensors to enterprise systems and human interactions, companies create massive amounts of siloed data that remains an untapped resource, limiting the potential for data-driven advancements and agility. Data fragmentation created by proprietary formats and lack of interoperability makes it difficult to achieve cross-domain applications of data. Along with technological factors, complex physical factors exist as well. Factory productivity can be disrupted by outages, accidents, issues with quality control, and more.

To address these challenges and help manufacturers work towards digital maturity, we are announcing manufacturing data solutions in Microsoft Fabric, and copilot template for factory operations on Azure AI, available in private preview. These solutions enable manufacturers to:

• Ingest and unify data directly from diverse sources across the factory ecosystem. 
• Standardize and enrich data according to the International Society of Automation (ISA-95) model for seamless interoperability.  
• Utilize custom copilots for querying data through conversational interfaces. 

Optimize production with manufacturing data solutions in Microsoft Fabric

Manufacturing data solutions in Fabric allows users to maximize the value of factory data and uncover operational insights for production optimization. This is accomplished by unifying information technology (IT) and operational technology (OT) data into an open and secure data platform. Organizations can realize further benefits by getting manufacturing data ready for AI by enriching it with semantic context that follows an industry standard ISA-95 information model. 

Fabric enables customers to accelerate time to insight generation by unifying, enriching, and modeling manufacturing data in Fabric. The solution ingests data from a variety of sources such as factory-domain data from sensors, systems of record like manufacturing execution system (MES) and enterprise resource planning (ERP), and industrial automation applications. The data is then stored on Microsoft Fabric One Lake for unification, enrichment, modeling, and aggregation. This unified data provides a scalable and repeatable pattern to tackle all factory-domain data projects, accelerating the pace of innovation, freeing up IT resources, and maximizing the value of an organization’s technology investments. 

Customers can extract the full value of their factory data and existing manufacturing solutions landscape using manufacturing data solutions in Fabric. For example, a production supervisor conducting a root cause analysis to determine a correlation between material batches, machine utilization, and quality issues might spend weeks manually aggregating data from several systems and require IT support. With manufacturing data solutions in Fabric, the supervisor has quick access to contextualized data for analysis, completing it in hours instead of weeks. This saves valuable time and immediately provides insights that increase agility and innovation.  

Increase agility with copilot template for factory operations on Azure AI

Creating a unified data lake with manufacturing data solutions in Fabric is essential to optimize AI capabilities. Copilots can enhance responsiveness and streamline communication across teams and roles. We are building an industry-specific augmentation loop to help partners and customers use the Microsoft Copilot stack more quickly with out-of-the-box prompt templates, connectors, and skills all packaged as a standard plugin. Customers can then use natural language to get timely and accurate data from complex systems like MES, quality management system (QMS), and supply planning with minimal effort.  

With copilot template for factory operations on Azure AI, a production supervisor for example, can open a custom chatbot and quickly query the data in a conversational way and identify quality issues in minutes instead of hours. The copilot template is a managed application in the customer-tenant, offering organizations full visibility and control of their data. The template features the latest Microsoft technologies such as Azure AI models, Semantic Kernel, and Azure Cognitive Search, and is extended through the Microsoft third-party independent software vendor (ISV) ecosystem. 

Microsoft Cloud for Manufacturing Partner ecosystem

Microsoft’s partner ecosystem with its deep industry expertise extends Microsoft Cloud for Manufacturing offerings. Systems integrators and ISVs are enabling factory data ingestion from different systems by building custom or proprietary connectors into Fabric: embedding the solution capabilities into their applications or building custom UI experiences for the copilot templates on Azure AI. 

Accenture and Avanade—Manufacturing data solutions in Fabric and copilot template on Azure AI 

Empowering customers to unlock the full potential of their factory data, Accenture and Avanade collaborated on the development of the Avanade Manufacturing copilot, powered by manufacturing data solutions in Fabric, which facilitates innovation, operational efficiency, and data-driven decision-making. By leveraging data from various sources, such as MES, programmable logic controllers (PLCs), sensors, and ERP, the copilot enables seamless querying and generation of insights in natural language for factory workers.  

As leading global system integrators and trusted private preview implementation partners for Microsoft Cloud for Manufacturing, Accenture and Avanade are spearheading the delivery of manufacturing data solutions and copilot templates. With expertise in integrating key Microsoft technologies, like Fabric and Azure OpenAI Service, and collaborating across the broader ISV ecosystem, Accenture and Avanade stand at the forefront of driving digital transformation in the manufacturing sector. 

“Avanade Manufacturing copilot, powered by manufacturing data solutions in Microsoft Fabric, can help AI systems understand data from diverse OT-IT systems that manage complex manufacturing supply chains, processes, equipment, and product ranges in near real-time. With our graph-of-graphs approach to knowledge management and the open ISA-95 standard, we’re able to supercharge the ask-an-expert capabilities of Microsoft Copilot. This is vital in an era of labor and skills shortages, rising production targets, and the need to cut costs and carbon emissions.”

—Brendan Mislin, General Manager, Avanade Industry X

To learn more about Accenture and Avanade Manufacturing copilot offerings, visit their AppSource page. 

Sight Machine Manufacturing Data Platform and Factory CoPilot on Microsoft Cloud for Manufacturing

Sight Machine’s Manufacturing Data Platform (MDP) helps global manufacturers unlock the power of industrial data to increase profitability, productivity, and sustainability. Sight Machine makes it easy to integrate contextualized production data in Fabric. With its data and analytics tools, Sight Machine’s MDP enables companies to combine and analyze contextualized manufacturing data with financial, supply chain, ERP, and MES data. This allows for unprecedented levels of knowledge and enterprise-wide insight. Sight Machine’s Factory CoPilot leverages Microsoft factory operations copilot template on Azure AI to provide conversational querying of the data within the UI of the Factory CoPilot. This enables plant managers and quality engineers to interact with the data to uncover insights faster and accelerate issue resolution.  

“Until now, industrial companies have been unable to incorporate their manufacturing data as a full citizen of their data estates. With Sight Machine on Microsoft Cloud for Manufacturing, companies can optimize production scheduling globally, determine which equipment is best at fulfilling an order, know which lines are at highest risk of going down, see the status of orders, and determine when to re-route them to another facility. It has never been possible to do this in a truly data-driven way.”

—Jon Sobel, Chief Executive Officer and Co-Founder, Sight Machine 

Learn more about Sight Machine solutions on Microsoft Cloud for Manufacturing, visit the Azure Marketplace.

Litmus Automation connector

In the dynamic landscape of industrial operations, Litmus stands at the forefront of data management, offering an advanced DataOps platform that seamlessly operates at the edge. With the ability to swiftly extract, normalize, and model data along with metadata, Litmus Edge empowers enterprises with edge data expertise. Paired with manufacturing data solution in Fabric, this collaboration pioneers a transformative approach, enabling the establishment of a robust hybrid edge-to-cloud infrastructure. From streamlining real-time machine dashboards to facilitating advanced machine learning, the synergy between Litmus and manufacturing data solutions in Fabric unlocks unprecedented efficiency and innovation, seamlessly bridging the gap between edge and cloud.

To learn more about Litmus solutions on Microsoft Cloud for Manufacturing, visit the Azure Marketplace.

AVEVA Connect Industrial Intelligence Platform, integrated with Microsoft Cloud for Manufacturing

AVEVA is collaborating with Microsoft on extending AVEVA’s Industrial AI Assistant to showcase how generative AI enhances supply chain production planning and plant floor production. It helps with scheduling, improving operational efficiency, and decision making in plants and across the supply chain. Using AVEVA’s Industrial Intelligence Platform, CONNECT, and Microsoft Cloud for Manufacturing, AVEVA unifies and contextualizes production execution data and supply chain production planning data in Fabric. AVEVA’s Industrial AI Assistant provides a seamless conversational experience, through a copilot template on Azure AI, that empowers plant floor and supply chain employees with valuable insights to resolve issues and accelerate decision-making activities. 

CONNECT unifies an organization’s industrial ecosystem in a single, secure platform—helping users do more with industrial data, driving digital transformation in real time with powerful intelligence and robust insights. 

Users can easily access software as a service (SaaS) capability through CONNECT to create an industrial hybrid architecture that offers the robustness of on-premises industrial applications with the scale and accessibility of cloud. With CONNECT, companies can engineer smarter and operate better with an open and neutral industrial cloud platform. Organizations can promote sustainable growth by achieving transformation faster, reducing costs, and optimizing at scale. Lastly, manufacturers can connect their business to their ecosystem of partners and accelerate time to value using proven industrial expertise. 

Rockwell Automation’s Plex on Microsoft Cloud for Manufacturing

Rockwell is collaborating with Microsoft Cloud for Manufacturing to introduce natural language copilot experiences within Plex. These innovations aim to streamline quality issue resolution through corrective actions and root cause analysis.  

Corrective action teams often struggle with accessing the correct data and determining root cause. With today’s high workforce attrition, the ability to generate insights and share knowledge about a problem or process is also key. Leveraging Microsoft AI capabilities, Rockwell’s Plex Smart Manufacturing Platform will accelerate the resolution of customer complaints by swiftly identifying root causes and accessing critical data for corrective actions.  

Stay tuned as Rockwell and Microsoft drive innovation in quality management for manufacturing. 

“With the integration of Rockwell’s Plex Smart Manufacturing Platform with FactoryTalk DataMosaix and Microsoft Cloud for Manufacturing, customers will benefit from transformative AI tools that help drive productivity, safety, and quality.”

—Anthony Murphy, Vice President, Product Management

Learn more at Hannover Messe 2024

Discover more about manufacturing data solutions in Fabric during a live demonstration at Hanover Messe in April 2024.  

The post Optimizing factory operations with Microsoft Cloud for Manufacturing appeared first on Microsoft Industry Blogs.

Source: Microsoft Industry Blog