Current market conditions are demonstrating how heavily the world relies on manufacturers’ abilities to operate agile factories and resilient supply chains. One great illustration of the critical role of manufacturers is explained in the inside story of how a group of rival companies came together to make ventilators for the NHS during the COVID-19 pandemic.
For the last few years, we’ve saved many of our best Microsoft customer, partner, and Microsoft’s manufacturing solutions news for Hannover Messe, and hope to be able to join the manufacturing community again in person in 2021.
The inaugural Microsoft Digital Manufacturing Summit launched on June 24th, and I hope you will join me and our global community as we share best practices and innovations to help create more agile factories and resilient supply chains during this time of disruption.
Following the launch of accelerators in five other industries over the past 18 months, the Microsoft Dynamics 365 Manufacturing Accelerator is now in public preview. Our initial focus is on helping manufacturing organizations adapt to and manage their suppliers.
We are hearing from our manufacturing customers around the globe about how the outbreak of COVID-19 is creating new challenges as they work to handle drastic shifts in materials supply and customer demand, and manage factory closures, while contributing to the production of critical supplies to first-line responders across the globe.
Even before we introduced the Azure IoT Suite back in 2015, Microsoft was helping manufacturers realize the full business value of IoT. Backed by decades of experience in enterprise, we quickly became an innovator in industrial IoT (IIoT).
Manufacturing—and the technology that makes it more intelligent—is shaping our future in exciting ways that benefit manufacturers, their employees and customers, and the world at large. Supporting responsible and sustainable manufacturing aligns with Microsoft’s mission to empower every person and every organization on the planet to achieve more.
In previous posts in this series, we’ve discussed how IoT is changing the manufacturing industry, ways to use IoT data more effectively, and how to think beyond the factory floor when rolling out IoT technology.