Microsoft has released a preview of the Microsoft Cloud for Manufacturing. The platform is intended to help manufacturing and industrial businesses digitally transform. Johnson & Johnson, a healthcare corporation, was an early adopter of the Microsoft Cloud for Manufacturing, employing it to develop next-generation manufacturing capabilities.

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The Microsoft Cloud for Manufacturing is intended to provide manufacturers with the flexibility to adapt the capabilities they require to address their most pressing business needs, whether that is 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 is built on a flexible structure that allows manufacturers to develop as they go. This modular and extendable solution activates end-to-end cloud services such as supply chain visibility as well as edge services for securely connecting industrial equipment or delivering key production and supply chain execution capabilities for mission-critical factories and warehouse sites.

The new technology brings together Microsoft Teams frontline workers and mixed reality across the Cloud. This is intended to boost productivity in hybrid work environments by integrating information from securely connected IoT assets and goods into workflows and business processes in Microsoft Dynamics 365 Business Applications and partner solutions.

The platform includes a new Supply Chain Visibility capability that enables manufacturers to generate a digital supply chain twin, a digital copy of the physical supply chain, in order to forecast and proactively overcome disruptions. In the case of a worldwide disruption, manufacturers may examine both upstream and downstream damage, run simulations and model scenarios at scale, and then automate that reaction.

Johnson & Johnson is collaborating with Microsoft on its digital manufacturing transformation, leveraging solutions such as Microsoft Azure, artificial intelligence (AI), the Internet of Things (IoT), edge computing, Manufacturing Execution Systems (MES), and Microsoft Cloud for Manufacturing.

The purpose of this plan is to accelerate cloud and other digital capabilities in order to enable business innovation, improve agility, lower the total cost of ownership, and improve disaster recovery. Johnson & Johnson aspires to impact the future of healthcare through technology by leveraging a strong digital core, findable and accessible data, and agile platforms.

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