Microsoft and Hitachi announce partnership to transform manufacturing and logistics industries

Microsoft and Hitachi have announced a multiyear strategic alliance to transform the manufacturing and logistics industries across Southeast Asia, North America and Japan. As part of this alliance, Hitachi will integrate its solutions like Lumada, and its IoT-ready industrial controllers HX Series, with Azure, Dynamics 365 and Microsoft 365. Hitachi and Microsoft are also working to integrate Lumada and Azure into an industry data platform.

“We are delighted to expand our partnership with Microsoft and combine our OT, IT and products excellence to provide manufacturing and logistics companies with digital solutions. We use Lumada to provide total seamless solutions to solve challenges by connecting cyberspaces with physical spaces. Through this collaboration with Microsoft, we will be able to accelerate our customers’ digital transformation and continue to deliver social, environmental and economic value,” said Jun Abe, Vice President and Executive Officer, CEO of Industry & Distribution Business Unit, Hitachi Ltd.

As part of this partnership, Hitachi will offer the following solutions using Microsoft Azure services.

• Increase manufacturing productivity: Using Hitachi Digital Supply Chain as well as Azure IoT to analyze 4M data collected from manufacturing sites for the visualization and analysis of production processes to optimize factory operations and increase productivity.
• Optimize logistics with data analytics: Increasing the logistics efficiency and reducing operational costs by analyzing traffic congestion, storage locations and delivery locations, and enabling smart routing to save miles and deliver faster through advanced digital technologies such as Azure Maps and Hitachi Digital Solution for Logistics/Delivery Optimization Service.
• Predictive maintenance and remote assist: Enabling predictive maintenance, real-time remote assistance and remote training scenarios for first-line workers, leveraging HoloLens 2 and Dynamics 365 Remote Assist as well as other smart devices.

The above solutions will be available in Thailand in July 2020. It will also be available in North America and Japan later on.

Source: Microsoft