Google Cloud and Siemens have announced a new cooperation to optimise factory processes and improve productivity on the shop floor. Siemens intends to integrate Google Cloud’s leading data cloud and artificial intelligence/machine learning (AI/ML) technologies with its factory automation solutions to help manufacturers innovate for the future.
Data drives today’s industrial processes, but many manufacturers continue to use legacy software and multiple systems to analyse plant information, which is resource-intensive and requires frequent manual updates to ensure accuracy. In addition, while AI projects have been deployed by many companies in islands across the plant floor, manufacturers have struggled to implement AI at scale across their global operations.
For more than 170 years, Siemens has built its business on pioneering technologies that have led the manufacturing industry forward. By combining Google Cloud’s data cloud and AI/ML capabilities with Siemens’ Digital Industries Factory Automation portfolio, manufacturers will be able to harmonise their factory data, run cloud-based AI/ML models on top of that data and deploy algorithms at the network edge. This enables applications such as visual inspection of products or predicting the wear-and-tear of machines on the assembly line.
Deploying AI to the shop floor and integrating it into automation and the network is a complex task, requiring highly specialised expertise and innovative products such as Siemens Industrial Edge. The goal of the co-operation between Google Cloud and Siemens is to make the deployment of AI in connection with the Industrial Edge – and its management at scale – easier, empowering employees as they work on the plant floor, automating mundane tasks and improving overall quality.
“The potential for artificial intelligence to transform the plant floor is far from being exhausted,” said Axel Lorenz, VP of Control at Factory Automation of Siemens Digital Industries. “Many manufacturers are still stuck in AI pilot projects today and we want to change that. Combining AI/ML technology from Google Cloud with Siemens’ solutions will be a game changer for the manufacturing industry.”
“Siemens is a leader in advancing industrial automation and software and Google Cloud is a leader in data analytics and AI/ML,” concluded Dominik Wee, managing director Manufacturing and Industrial at Google Cloud. “This cooperation will combine the best of both worlds and bring AI/ML to the manufacturing industry at scale. By simplifying the deployment of AI in industrial use cases, we’re helping employees augment their critical work on the shop floor.”
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