IT in Manufacturing


Siemens and Microsoft harness generative artificial intelligence

June 2023 IT in Manufacturing

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 together with 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.

“The integration of AI into technology platforms will profoundly change how we work and how every business operates,” said Scott Guthrie, executive vice president, Cloud + AI, Microsoft. “With Siemens, we are bringing the power of AI to more industrial organisations, enabling them to simplify workflows, overcome silos and collaborate in more inclusive ways to accelerate customer-centric innovation.”

With the new Teamcenter app for Microsoft Teams, anticipated later in 2023, the companies are enabling design engineers, frontline workers, and teams across business functions to close feedback loops faster and solve challenges together. For example, service engineers or production operatives can use mobile devices to document and report product design or quality concerns using natural speech. Through Azure OpenAI Service, the app can parse that informal speech data, automatically creating a summarised report and routing it within Teamcenter to the appropriate design, engineering or manufacturing expert. To foster inclusion, workers can record their observations in their preferred language, which is then translated into the official company language with Microsoft Azure AI. Microsoft Teams provides user-friendly features like push notifications to simplify workflow approvals, reduce the time it takes to request design changes, and speed up innovation cycles. The Teamcenter app for Microsoft Teams can enable millions of workers who do not have access to PLM tools today to impact the design and manufacturing process more easily as part of their existing workflows.

Siemens and Microsoft are also collaborating to help software developers and automation engineers accelerate the code generation for Programmable Logic Controllers (PLC), the industrial computers that control most machines across the world’s factories. At Hannover Messe, the companies are demonstrating a concept for how OpenAI’s ChatGPT and other Azure AI services can augment Siemens’ industrial automation engineering solutions. The showcase will highlight how engineering teams can significantly reduce time and the probability of errors by generating PLC code through natural language inputs. These capabilities can also enable maintenance teams to identify errors, and generate step-by-step solutions more quickly.

“Powerful, advanced artificial intelligence is emerging as one of the most important technologies for digital transformation,” said Cedrik Neike, a member of the managing board of Siemens AG and CEO Digital Industries. “Siemens and Microsoft are coming together to deploy tools like ChatGPT so we can empower workers at enterprises of all sizes to collaborate and innovate in new ways.”

Early detection of defects in production is critical to prevent costly and time-consuming production adjustments. Industrial AI, like computer vision, enables quality management teams to scale quality control, identify product variances easier and make real-time adjustments even faster. In Hanover, teams will demonstrate how, using Microsoft Azure Machine Learning and Siemens’ Industrial Edge, images captured by cameras and videos can be analysed by machine learning systems and used to build, deploy, run and monitor AI vision models on the shop floor.

This collaboration is part of the longstanding strategic relationship between Siemens and Microsoft, built on over 35 years of joint innovation with thousands of customers. Other areas of collaboration include Senseye on Azure, enabling companies to run predictive maintenance at enterprise scale, and support for customers that seek to host their business applications in the Microsoft Cloud to run solutions from the Siemens Xcelerator open digital business platform, including Teamcenter, on Azure. Siemens is also partnering with Microsoft as part of its zero trust strategy.


Credit(s)



Share this article:
Share via emailShare via LinkedInPrint this page

Further reading:

Five data centre trends to watch in 2025
IT in Manufacturing
Any innovation that comes out in 2025 – whether it’s flying cars, highly advanced AI or a breakthrough medical treatment – will be built on the back of an equally innovative IT foundation driven by data. Data that needs to be stored, managed and made accessible in the data centre, in the cloud or at the edge. Is it too much of a stretch to say the future of humankind is dependent on data storage? We don’t think so.

Read more...
Recovering from a cyberattack
IT in Manufacturing
While many organisations have invested heavily in frontline defence tools to try to keep out bad actors, they have spent far less time and money preparing for what happens when the criminals eventually get in. And they will get in.

Read more...
The value of proactive maintenance management
Schneider Electric South Africa IT in Manufacturing
Maintenance has come a long way from the days when we waited for things to break, and thanks to the ever-increasing capabilities of technology, predictive maintenance has become a viable solution for keeping equipment running smoothly and efficiently around the world.

Read more...
Significant decarbonisation can be achieved in the mining industry
ABB South Africa IT in Manufacturing
ABB has released a global report titled ‘Mining’s Moment’, which highlights the progress being made by the mining industry to make operations more sustainable.

Read more...
Pinpointing pipeline occurrences in seconds, not hours
Schneider Electric South Africa IT in Manufacturing
At any given moment, thousands of kilometres of critical assets flow through pipelines that cross veld, mountainous areas, dense forests, and even busy streets. Surprisingly, many of these pipelines operate either unmonitored or with scant oversight, leading to missed opportunities for operational continuity and efficiency.

Read more...
Next-generation AI-enhanced electronic systems design software
Siemens South Africa IT in Manufacturing
Siemens Digital Industries Software has launched the latest advancement in its electronic systems design portfolio. The next-generation release takes an integrated and multidisciplinary approach, bringing a unified user experience that delivers cloud connectivity and AI capabilities to push the boundaries of innovation in electronic systems design.

Read more...
Spatial computing and AI – where no man has sustainably gone before
Schneider Electric South Africa IT in Manufacturing
Some will argue that we now live in a sci-fi world where we dream of electric sheep, and today’s technology – unlike HAL – can provide us with the answers we seek. To the realist it might seem a bit implausible, but when you start using terms like ‘spatial computing realises sustainable AI’ it doesn’t seem that far-fetched.

Read more...
Safeguarding DCS today and tomorrow
Schneider Electric South Africa IT in Manufacturing
Today’s distributed control systems (DCS) are highly intelligent, converging OT and IT in a centralised manner that allows for simplified management and coordination of operations. It is technology evolution at its finest, but with a caveat, cybersecurity challenges.

Read more...
Quantum computing is not as futuristic as it sounds
IT in Manufacturing
The first quantum computer was created almost three decades ago. While its applications are still unknown to many, this advanced field combines computer science, physics and mathematics to deliver solutions the world has been trying to find for aeons – and those it doesn’t yet know it needs.

Read more...
Transform field data into actionable business data
IT in Manufacturing
As part of its ongoing commitment to enhancing industry connectivity, Teledyne Gas & Flame Detection is making its new and proprietary Teledyne GDCloud available with the company´s GS700, GS500 and Shipsurveyor portable gas leak detectors, and also its PS200 portable four-gas monitor for personal safety and confined-space applications.

Read more...