Partnering with Microsoft continues to be an important part of manufacturing software development. This news is from Hexagon partnering with Microsoft to integrate engineering with Microsoft 365 to foster data collaboration among engineers. There’s a lot of marketing overkill in the release, but the essence is they hope to improve innovation through engineers and designers using improved collaboration tools.
- 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
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.
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.
