- Hexagon has contributed significantly to the open-source Fluid
Framework data architecture that connects any manufacturing system
and will integrate with Microsoft 365 creating agile, simplified
workflows and productive collaboration using engineering and
productivity software
- Hexagon will roll-out applications that integrate the Microsoft
Azure OpenAI Service to empower experienced employees to be
more productive and assist less skilled users
- These innovations form a significant foundation for new
real-time co-engineering applications that combine Hexagon's
digital twin technologies with Microsoft Azure
HANNOVER, Germany, April 23,
2024 /PRNewswire/ -- Hexagon's Manufacturing
Intelligence division today announces its strategic partnership
with Microsoft, which aims to redefine how engineers collaborate
and enable the discrete manufacturing industry to innovate faster,
with more confidence, and with new solutions that combine data from
virtual engineering processes with real-world measurement of
manufactured products. The collaboration will offer solutions that
use modern cloud infrastructure to connect manufacturing and
engineering systems – including Microsoft 365 – in
Hexagon's Nexus digital reality platform for manufacturers,
and help employees increase their productivity through
cloud-accelerated simulation and AI.
The partnership aims to transform collaboration across the
manufacturing value chain and apply digital twins to accelerate
product innovation.
Transforming how manufacturers collaborate
Hexagon and Microsoft have partnered closely on the development
and scaling of the open-source Fluid Framework and Azure Fluid
Relay service to support the real-time sharing of data across a
wide range of manufacturing industry processes and systems,
allowing data created in one system to be immediately available to
any other person or machine operating in another. Under the new
partnership, the Microsoft 365 ecosystem will plug into this data
layer, enabling customers to connect their day-to-day office
documents and processes with manufacturing tools. This gives teams
the freedom to innovate with the tools they already use; for
example, tooling cost data from a Microsoft Excel worksheet could
be easily shared with a CAM programmer, so simplifying work
practices and decision-making between roles.
Microsoft Teams calls can become interactive working sessions,
with CAD, simulations or metrology point clouds seamlessly
visualised from the source data to allow on-the-spot collaboration
and fast, iterative teamwork across disparate engineering and
manufacturing functions. Hexagon has already demonstrated this
capability in its 3D Whiteboard Nexus tool, which is also now
available as an native app in Teams.
Accelerating innovation through AI and high-performance
computing
Hexagon is working with Microsoft to integrate generative AI
models into its manufacturing software, helping users to make
better use of their capabilities and analysing existing datasets to
learn and suggest the best practices for achieving desired outputs.
These AI experiences include contextual advisors, offering expert
users productivity-boosting automation while also helping new users
to upskill faster and achieve good results with less supervision –
a valuable tool as the industry faces a growing skills shortage in
many essential roles.
The partnership will apply Hexagon's manufacturing, engineering
and data science domain expertise and Microsoft Azure's elastic
computing and high-performance computing (HPC) infrastructure to
accelerate engineering simulations by up to three orders of
magnitude, making it possible to streamline design &
engineering workflows to deliver innovative products to market at
greater speed. Hexagon's machine learning technology optimizes
heavy-load simulations, allowing them to run much more efficiently.
Azure customers will be able to use their existing contracts to
access this machine learning-accelerated compute service through
Nexus – allowing teams to use the IT they already have in
place.
Combining Hexagon's measurement and reality capture technology
and Nexus open-access
platform with Microsoft's cloud ecosystem creates the
foundation for agile and collaborative engineering applications and
industrial metaverse use cases. A digital twin utilising Azure
compute for simulations can now draw Hexagon's real-world,
real-time data capture and present information to users without
complex systems integration. By implementing these technologies,
manufacturers can create new workflows across the product lifecycle
that shorten time to market, improve factory-floor efficiencies,
identify manufacturing problems in real-time and improve
quality.
Stephen Graham, EVP and
General Manager Nexus at Hexagon said: "At Hexagon, we're on a
mission to empower the workforce by presenting them with the best
available information as soon as possible and helping them to close
the gap between their optimal-performance virtual designs and the
physical products that they manufacture. We have achieved a huge
amount with Microsoft in a few short months by collaborating
closely and applying their best cloud technologies to unlock new
ways of collaborating and sharing data.
Our strategic partnership takes this to the next level, driving
a shared vison and go-to-market to help our customers connect their
Hexagon tools and products with third-party engineering systems and
Microsoft 365. This allows for completely new workflows to be
built, increasing the visibility of data, enabling sustainable
innovation and increasing productivity from design &
engineering to end-of-life management."
Aleš Holeček, Corporate Vice President Office Product Group,
at Microsoft said: "Microsoft's collaboration with Hexagon is
driven by a shared belief that the future of work and productivity
is grounded in collaboration. Similar to how Microsoft applied the
Fluid Framework to our own Microsoft 365 applications, Hexagon has
extended that same open-source data fabric to manufacturing
problems, enabling real-time collaboration between the many
engineering disciplines it takes to make a great product, through
its Nexus platform running on Microsoft Azure. It's something that
will push the boundaries for workplace collaboration for both of
our platforms as we connect productivity with the engineering and
operational technologies 'makers' need to be productive today."
Learn more about Nexus at
https://hexagon.com/products/product-groups/nexus
Media contacts:
Robin Wolstenholme
Global Media Relations and Analyst Relations Manager
Hexagon's Manufacturing Intelligence Division
Phone: +44(0)7407 642190
e-mail: robin.wolstenholme@hexagon.com
Global press office: media.mi@hexagon.com
About Hexagon
Hexagon is the global leader in digital reality solutions,
combining sensor, software and autonomous technologies. We are
putting data to work to boost efficiency, productivity, quality and
safety across industrial, manufacturing, infrastructure, public
sector, and mobility applications.
Our technologies are shaping production and people related
ecosystems to become increasingly connected and autonomous –
ensuring a scalable, sustainable future. Hexagon's Manufacturing
Intelligence division provides solutions that use data from design
and engineering, production and metrology to make manufacturing
smarter. For more information, visit hexagon.com/mi.
Hexagon (Nasdaq Stockholm: HEXA B) has approximately 24,500
employees in 50 countries and net sales of approximately
5.4bn EUR. Learn more at hexagon.com
and follow us @HexagonAB.
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SOURCE Hexagon