Hexagon partners Microsoft to combine real-world measurements with virtual engineering processes

“We have achieved a huge amount with Microsoft in a few short months by collaborating closely and applying their best cloud technologies to unlock new ways of collaborating and sharing data.”

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Hexagon’s Manufacturing Intelligence division has announced its partnership with Microsoft. The duo is collaborating to define how engineers collaborate, speed up innovation in the manufacturing industry, and discover new solutions that combine data from virtual engineering processes with real-world measurements, relating to manufactured products.

The pair hope that through collaboration, solutions that utilise both cloud infrastructure and manufacturing engineering solutions can be found and will help users increase productivity levels. Specific technologies the duo will look at using include Microsoft 365 and Hexagon’s Nexus digital reality platform.

“At Hexagon, we're on a mission to empower the workforce by presenting them with the best available information as soon as possible and helping them to close the gap between their optimal-performance virtual designs and the physical products that they manufacture,” said Stephen Graham, EVP and General Manager Nexus at Hexagon. “We have achieved a huge amount with Microsoft in a few short months by collaborating closely and applying their best cloud technologies to unlock new ways of collaborating and sharing data.”

“Our strategic partnership takes this to the next level, driving a shared vision and go-to-market to help our customers connect their Hexagon tools and products with third-party engineering systems and Microsoft 365. This allows for completely new workflows to be built, increasing the visibility of data, enabling sustainable innovation and increasing productivity from design & engineering to end-of-life management.”

Microsoft works to enhance teamwork and productivity

By innovating the Fluid Framework and Azure Fluid Relay service, the duo hopes to support the real-time sharing of data to cover a variety of manufacturing industry processes and systems. In simple terms, data being created on one system should be available to another user on a separate system immediately. The Microsoft 365 ecosystem should work to plug into this data layer, allowing users to connect day-to-day office documents and processes with manufacturing tools.

Additionally, Microsoft Teams calls can become more interactive with CAD, simulation or metrology point cloud now visualised using source data. This can provide on-the-spot collaboration and speedy teamwork. 

“Microsoft's collaboration with Hexagon is driven by a shared belief that the future of work and productivity is grounded in collaboration,” said Aleš Holeček, Corporate Vice President Office Product Group, at Microsoft.

“Similar to how Microsoft applied the Fluid Framework to our own Microsoft 365 applications, Hexagon has extended that same open-source data fabric to manufacturing problems, enabling real-time collaboration between the many engineering disciplines it takes to make a great product, through its Nexus platform running on Microsoft Azure. It's something that will push the boundaries for workplace collaboration for both of our platforms as we connect productivity with the engineering and operational technologies 'makers' need to be productive today."

Combining Hexagon and Microsoft’s technologies

Through the integration of generative AI models into manufacturing software, the duo hopes to improve best practices with users able to make better use of analysing existing datasets. For example, contextual advisors will be able to offer productivity-boosting automation advice with less supervision required. 

Combining Hexagon’s manufacturing, engineering, and data science domain expertise with Microsoft Azure’s elastic and high-performance computing (HPC) infrastructure, users should experience streamlined design and engineering workflows which will speed up product innovation. Azure customers will be able to use existing contracts to access the compute service through Nexus.

By combining Hexagon’s measurement and reality capture technology and the Nexus open-access platform with the cloud ecosystem created by Microsoft, users will have a solid foundation for collaborative engineering applications and industrial metaverse use cases. Hexagon’s real-world data can be transformed using a digital twin powered by Azure Compute, which can shorten manufacturing times, improve efficiency levels, and enhance quality assurance.