Elly Yates-Roberts |
Microsoft has launched a preview of its new Microsoft Cloud for Manufacturing solution.
“The Microsoft Cloud for Manufacturing brings the best outcome-driven solutions and capabilities from Microsoft and our partners to accelerate time to value for our customers in an end-to-end, holistic, and scalable way,” said Çağlayan Arkan, vice president of manufacturing industry at Microsoft. “By connecting intelligent, integrated cloud, and edge capabilities of the Microsoft stack to the highest value manufacturing scenarios, we are creating a flywheel of innovation that helps businesses increase asset and frontline worker productivity in safe and secure factories, enable remote selling and always-on service, and unlock cloud-based innovation – all with the utmost trust, compliance, privacy, and transparency.”
With few manufacturers having the budget or infrastructure to get rid of an existing work framework and start again, the Microsoft Cloud for Manufacturing’s modular framework allows manufacturers to start easily and innovate.
“This modular and extensible solution activates both end-to-end cloud services like supply chain visibility or edge services for securely connecting factory devices or deploying core production and supply chain execution capabilities for mission critical factories and warehouse locations,” said Arkan.
Microsoft’s manufacturing solution is designed to give manufacturers the flexibility to adopt capabilities they need to address their specific needs.
One company that is making use of the capabilities of Microsoft Cloud for Manufacturing is US-based pharmaceutical company Johnson & Johnson, which is working on its digital manufacturing transformation with tools like Microsoft Azure, artificial intelligence, the internet of things, edge computing, manufacturing execution systems, and Microsoft Cloud for Manufacturing capabilities.
“The company aims to drive cloud and other digital capabilities to enable business innovation, improve agility, reduce cost of ownership and improve disaster recovery,” said Arkan. “With a solid digital core, findable and accessible data, and agile platforms, Johnson & Johnson seeks to shape the future of healthcare through technology.”