Siemens and Microsoft are partnering to combine generative AI, PLM, and industrial automation. The aim is to boost innovation across the design, engineering, manufacturing and operational lifecycle of products.

To improve 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.

Siemens and Microsoft are also collaborating to help software developers and automation engineers accelerate code generation for Programmable Logic Controllers (PLC).

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.

Through Azure OpenAI Service, the app can parse 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 languages 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.  

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.

“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.”

“Powerful, advanced artificial intelligence is emerging as one of the most important technologies for digital transformation,” said Cedrik Neike, 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.”