Microsoft has made the Microsoft Cloud for Manufacturing available for preview. The platform is designed to enable manufacturing and industrial companies to transform digitally.

Health products company Johnson & Johnson is an early adopter of the Microsoft Cloud for Manufacturing, and has been using it to build next generation manufacturing capabilities.

The Microsoft Cloud for Manufacturing is designed to give manufacturers the flexibility to adopt the capabilities they need to address their most pressing business needs, be it building more agile factories, creating more resilient supply chains, empowering the hybrid workforce to engage customers in new ways, or unlocking innovation and delivering new services.

The Microsoft Cloud for Manufacturing starts with a modular framework so manufacturers can innovate as they go. This modular and extensible solution activates both end-to-end cloud services like supply chain visibility or edge services for securely connecting factory devices or deploying core production and supply chain execution capabilities for mission critical factories and warehouse locations.

The new platform integrates Microsoft Teams frontline workers and mixed reality across the Cloud. This is designed to increase productivity in hybrid work scenarios, and allow insights from securely connected IoT assets and products to be integrated into workflows and business processes in Microsoft Dynamics 365 Business Applications and partner solutions.

The platform provides a new Supply Chain Visibility capability, allowing manufacturers to create a digital supply chain twin, a digital representation of the physical supply chain to predict disruptions and proactively overcome them. In the event of a global disruption, manufacturers can analyse both upstream and downstream impact and perform simulations and model scenarios at scale to determine the best resolution and then automate that response.

Johnson & Johnson is working with Microsoft on its digital manufacturing transformation with tools like Microsoft Azure, artificial intelligence (AI), the Internet of Things (IoT), edge computing, Manufacturing Execution Systems (MES), and Microsoft Cloud for Manufacturing capabilities. The company aims to drive cloud and other digital capabilities to enable business innovation, improve agility, reduce cost of ownership and improve disaster recovery. With a solid digital core, findable and accessible data, and agile platforms, Johnson & Johnson seeks to shape the future of healthcare through technology.

Microsoft partners extending Microsoft Cloud for Manufacturing core capabilities include:

• ABB Ability Energy and Asset Manager
• AVEVA Insight
• Blue Yonder Supply Chain Planning and Operations
• eLogic equipment360 for Dynamics 365 Field Service
• Experlogix CPQ for Dynamics 365 Sales & CE
• Icertis Contract Intelligence for Dynamics 365
• O9 Solutions Integrated Business Planning
• PROS Smart Configure Price Quote (CPQ)
• PTC Factory Insights as a Service
• Rockwell Automation Industrial IoT platform
• SAS for Improved Manufacturing Quality and Yield