The Record - Issue 18: Autumn 2020

109  AUTOMOT I V E As automotive manufacture look to new technologies to help them manage increasingly complex supply chains, we asked PTC how they’re partnering with Microsoft to drive efficiency and optimise operations across the industry A digital foundation “The partnership between PTC and Microsoft brings together PTC’s enterprise internet of things and augmented reality solutions to the automotive industry with the availability, security and scale of the Microsoft Azure cloud. Together, we’re able to help achieve real business impact of Industry 4.0 initiatives from connectivity to applications with unprecedented speed and scale, while also building a digital foundation for flexibility, agility and resilience for the future. Our approach drives efficiency across performance, assets and the workforce with proven, high-impact use cases. We can help achieve real-time views into production performance to help drive improvement in overall equipment efficiency and yield, understand asset performance to increase throughput, connect the silos in the shop floor and empower workers with up- to-date work instructions and training for improved labour productivity. These are just a few of the outcomes we’ve helped our customers achieve, but these outcomes underscore our emphasis on delivering business impact.” Stefan Bode presales business transformation manager at PTC supply chain leaders visibility of their inventory at all points of its journey. “Real time ETAs and the ability to see when there is any disruption that is going to cause delays, are critical capabilities in ensuring there is not excess days of inventory moving through the supply chain and you don’t have shortage of any part at any plant that could bring a line down” said Chris Cutshaw, director of commercial and product strategy at TMC, a division of C.H. Robinson. “We help by integrating with suppli- ers and enterprise resource planning systems to understand what is being ordered, transported, and delivered, and then feed those updates to key stakeholders and necessary systems in real time.” Following the outbreak of Covid-19, automo- tive manufacturers have been facing a whole new set of unexpected challenges. With fewer people physically working at a factory due to social distancing restrictions, they are having to find new ways to manage operations. More widely, changes to the frequency at which peo- ple use their vehicles may require a change in approach in the future. “People are not using cars as much because of the work-from-home measures in place,” says Coil. “For OEMs, this translates to a need to be nimbler to build the right number of vehicles. Microsoft comes into this challenge with the right tools in productivity and communication to ena- ble remote workers to collaborate with factory workers. We are helping OEMs with data estate platforms and AI tools to help thembetter manage the new norms for demand from customers.”