Rockwell Automation and Microsoft expand cloud and AI partnership

Rockwell Automation and Microsoft have announced an expanded strategic collaboration that the companies say is aimed at revolutionising industrial transformation through new cloud and AI solutions.

"We are excited to strengthen our partnership with Microsoft as we work to meet the evolving challenges faced by today’s manufacturers,” said Jessica Korpela, director, global customer innovation at Rockwell Automation. “This enhanced collaboration fuses cloud and AI technologies with our extensive expertise in industrial automation, enabling our customers to reach unprecedented levels of efficiency, innovation and resilience in their operations.”

At Rockwell’s Automation Fair in Anaheim California last week, Microsoft debuted its latest solution, Azure IoT Operations, which integrates with Rockwell’s digital products, including FactoryTalk Optix. The companies say the combined solution will allow manufacturers to capture critical insights from existing sites without extensive retrofitting. The adaptive cloud approach aims to simplify the integration of shop-floor data with cloud-based applications, enabling advanced analytics and improving scalability across multi-site environments.

Rockwell has also expanded its FactoryTalk Design Studio software-as-a-service design software with a new Generative AI Copilot, developed in partnership with Microsoft. The latest feature, powered by Microsoft Azure OpenAI Service, enables engineers to use natural language prompts for tasks like product guidance, code generation, troubleshooting and code explanations, making system design faster.

The collaboration will also introduce Rockwell’s FT Optix Food & Beverage model, enabled through Rockwell’s digital and service offerings, into the Microsoft AI model catalogue. The company says the model brings AI and GenAI directly to the manufacturing floor. The adapted AI model, which leverages Microsoft’s Phi-3 small language models (SLM), will provide machine operators with AI-guided instructions, assisting in process and device operations via the FactoryTalk Optix interface. With specifically trained models, workers can easily access contextualised AI guidance to enhance productivity, reduce errors, and accelerate decision-making.

“We are thrilled to continue our work with Rockwell Automation to help customers accelerate their industrial transformation journey,” said Kam VedBrat, General Manager, Azure IoT, Microsoft. “By combining Rockwell’s … automation solutions with Microsoft Azure IoT Operations, and through our collaboration on an adapted AI model based on Phi-3, we are enabling customers to unlock new levels of efficiency and innovation.”

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