Elly Yates-Roberts |
At this year’s Hannover Messe event, Microsoft and BMW launched a new Open Manufacturing Platform (OMP) to accelerate innovation. The solution aims to help manufacturers gain insights into their own data, integrate industrial solutions more quickly and securely and benefit from a cross-industry community.
The OMP enables firms to work together to break down data silos and solve the challenges of complex systems that slow down production.
“Microsoft is joining forces with the BMW Group to transform digital production efficiency across the industry,” said Scott Guthrie, executive vice president of Cloud and AI at Microsoft. “Our commitment to building an open community will create new opportunities for collaboration across the entire manufacturing value chain.”
Built on Microsoft Azure, the internet of things platform will accelerate production and optimise logistics in many ways. It standardises data across producers to ensure insights can be correlated faster. It provides opportunities to monetise data through controlled sharing and ownership and it also acts as an open source for OMP components.
“This is very good news for the manufacturing industry,” said Stefan Hoppe, president and CEO of the OPC Foundation. “The use of open international industry standards such as OPC unified architecture in the OMP community enables manufacturers, machine builders and suppliers to integrate their existing equipment and systems efficiently and securely. For a long time, companies have promoted proprietary, closed ecosystems — the OMP commitment to open development will shape tomorrow’s manufacturing.”