Microsoft and Siemens have partnered to bring the benefits of generative AI to industries worldwide. As a first step, the companies are introducing Siemens Industrial Copilot, an AI-powered jointly-developed assistant aimed at improving human-machine collaboration in manufacturing. In addition, the launch of the integration between Siemens Teamcentre software for product lifecycle management and Microsoft Teams will further pave the way to enable the industrial metaverse. It will simplify virtual collaboration of design engineers, frontline workers and other teams across business functions, a statement from Seimens has notified.
“With this next generation of AI, we have a unique opportunity to accelerate innovation across the entire industrial sector,” said Satya Nadella, Chairman and CEO, Microsoft, in the statement.
The companies envision AI copilots assisting professionals in various industries, including manufacturing, infrastructure, transportation and healthcare. Numerous copilots are already planned in the manufacturing sectors, such as automotive, consumer package goods and machine building, the statement added.
Nadela further said, “We’re building on our long-standing collaboration with Siemens and bringing together AI advances across the Microsoft Cloud with Siemens’s industrial domain expertise to empower both frontline and knowledge workers with new, AI-powered tools, starting with Siemens Industrial Copilot.”
The statement also mentioned that Siemens Industrial Copilot will allow users to rapidly generate, optimise and debug complex automation code, and significantly shorten simulation times. This will reduce a task that previously took weeks to minutes. The copilot ingests automation and process simulation information from Siemens’s open digital business platform, Siemens Xcelerator, and enhances it with Microsoft’s Azure OpenAI Service. Customers maintain full control over their data, and it is not used to train underlying AI models.
Roland Busch, CEO, Siemens AG, also said in the statement, “Together with Microsoft, our shared vision is to empower customers with the adoption of generative AI. This has the potential to revolutionise the way companies design, develop, manufacture and operate. Making human-machine collaboration more widely available allows engineers to accelerate code development, increase innovation and tackle skilled labour shortages.”
Schaeffler AG, an automotive supplier, is among the first in the automotive industry to embrace generative AI in the engineering phase. This helps its engineers to generate reliable code for programming industrial automation systems such as robots. In addition, the company intends to incorporate the Siemens Industrial Copilot during their own operations, aiming to significantly reduce downtimes, and also for stakeholders at a later stage.
”With this joint pilot, we’re stepping into a new age of productivity and innovation. This Siemens Industrial Copilot will help our team work more efficiently, reduce repetitive task and unleash creativity” Klaus Rosenfeld, CEO, Schaeffler Group, said in the statement.
To bring virtual collaboration across teams to the next level, Teamcentre for Microsoft Teams will be generally available beginning December 2023. This new app uses the latest advances in generative AI to connect functions across the product design and manufacturing lifecycle such as frontline workers to engineering teams. It connects Siemens’s Teamcentre software for product lifecycle management with Microsoft’s collaboration platform Teams to make data more accessible for factory and field service workers, as per the statement.
Siemens will share more details on Siemens Industrial Copilot at the SPS expo in Nuremberg, Germany this month, the statement concluded.