Siemens connects frontline workers and engineers for real-time problem-solving using Azure AI

Accelerating groundbreaking transformation for industrial and manufacturing customers is the driving force behind Siemens Digital Industries Software. “We strive to deliver innovation that changes people’s lives,” says Joe Bohman, Executive Vice President of PLM Products at Siemens Digital Industries Software. “When our customers are empowered, it impacts everything from company culture to the caliber of products and solutions they deliver to their customers.”

A division of Siemens AG, a German multinational technology conglomerate, Siemens Digital Industries Software provides a comprehensive portfolio of cutting-edge software, hardware, and services for design, manufacturing and product lifecycle management across industries such as automotive, aerospace, machinery, battery, medical, consumer products, marine, energy, and semiconductor.

With products becoming increasingly smart and connected, Siemens Digital Industries Software saw the need to help its customers improve cross-functional communication. “Manufacturing is becoming increasingly complex,” says Bohman. “We wanted to better connect field and shop floor workers with operations and engineering teams to not only drive innovation and efficiency, but to rapidly address problems as they arise.” The company envisioned an AI-powered collaborative app to help people working across product lifecycles close feedback loops faster, solve challenges together, and feel more connected to the larger organization.

Making problem reporting easy 

Siemens Digital Industries Software has long collaborated to support customers using Siemens software together with Microsoft solutions including Microsoft Teams. At many companies, shop floor workers do their best to type and report issues as they could. “But imagine you’re on a fast-paced factory line and you see a problem. Maybe you have gloves on, maybe you’re not speaking a language that is the same language as the software that has been implemented to track that line,” says Bohman. “The reality is problems won’t be reported if it’s too hard.”

With a long-standing relationship between Siemens and Microsoft—over 35 years of joint innovation—it was a natural choice for Siemens Digital Industries Software to work with Microsoft and use Microsoft Azure AI to produce an innovative solution for their customers. Together, the companies created a Microsoft Teams app for their Teamcenter software, Siemens’ industry-leading product lifecycle management (PLM) solution. Designed specifically to improve communications across the product lifecycle, the solution builds upon the collaborative platform of Teams, with the language model capabilities in Azure OpenAI Service and cutting-edge capabilities in Azure AI Foundry including prompt flow.

Siemens Digital Industries Software customers had been relying on the user-friendly features of Teams like push notifications to simplify workflow approvals, reduce the time it takes to request design changes, and speed up innovation cycles. But issues that could turn into larger problems were getting missed because reporting often happened later in the product development process or not at all. Siemens developers combined Teams capabilities with Azure AI and its comprehensive suite of tools, including prompt flow in Azure Machine Learning, to streamline workflows that included prototyping, deployment, and service production. “We felt Azure AI network isolation and its service-level agreement–backed availability were key in meeting our enterprise grade objectives,” says Manal Dave, Advanced Software Engineer at Siemens Digital Industries Software.

Dave adds, “We used the robust infrastructure of Azure AI to deliver a secure and highly available Teamcenter Teams app into people’s pockets, replacing bulky computer systems you would typically interact with. Our developers really like the UI-first approach of prompt flow and the ease of Azure AI Foundry. It definitely accelerated our adoption of advanced machine learning technologies, and they have a lot of confidence now for ongoing AI innovation with this solution and others to come.”  

Empowering workers to shape design and process

Now Siemens Digital Industries Software customers will be able to use the app’s “Tell Me” feature on their mobile device to document issues and report concerns using natural speech in real time. With Azure AI, the app can parse informal speech data no matter the language, automatically creating a summarized report and routing it within Teamcenter to the appropriate design, engineering, or manufacturing experts—in the specific language they require.

“With AI, we’re helping people report problems in their native language and automatically translate it to a common language,” says Bohman. “This is a game-changer. With Azure OpenAI Service, we can empower millions of workers who do not have access to product lifecycle management tools today to impact the design and manufacturing process more easily as part of their existing workflows.”

Adds Dave, “We believe that now the field engineers will be able to feel more included in the workplace, and managers or the engineers responsible for resolving the issue can take necessary action steps.” It also means getting different insights into problems, along with new ideas for solutions at different stages in the manufacturing process from the people responsible for those stages. This, says Dave, not only supports inclusion, but a greater sense of ownership and agency.

The solution is currently in pilot form with a few Siemens Digital Industries Software customers, where Bohman says it’s already helping them better connect teams, report issues, simplify workflows, and collaborate in more inclusive ways across the entire lifecycle of a product, from inception through engineering, design, and manufacturing to service and disposal. “We’re anticipating more problems being reported and faster resolution time, and using Azure AI allows us to do that,” Bohman says.

With the solution’s official release set for December 2023, the Siemens Teamcenter for Microsoft Teams app promises to simplify virtual collaboration of design engineers, frontline workers, and other teams across business functions—allowing more people to connect, collaborate, and contribute. As an example, using natural language, service technicians may soon gain quick access to simulation tools and be virtually assisted by engineers with detailed repair instructions. 

“We feel Azure AI and Azure AI Foundry are powerful and inclusive tools that align with our values of innovation and transformation that empowers people,” says Bohman. “We’ve had a long history working with Microsoft, and we’re happy to move into the next era of ongoing AI innovation together.”

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