Siemens Partners with Microsoft to Enable Voice-Based Product Development

Siemens and Microsoft are harnessing generative artificial intelligence (AI) to help industrial companies in the design, engineering, manufacturing, and operational lifecycle of products.

To enhance collaboration, the companies are integrating Siemens' Teamcenter software for product lifecycle management (PLM) with Microsoft's collaboration platform Teams and the language models in Azure OpenAI Service as well as other Azure AI capabilities.

With the new Teamcenter app for Microsoft Teams, design engineers, front-line workers, and teams across business functions can close feedback loops. For example, service engineers or production operatives can use mobile devices to document and report product design or quality concerns using natural speech. Through Azure OpenAI Service, the app can parse that informal speech data, automatically creating a summarized report and routing it within Teamcenter to the appropriate design, engineering, or manufacturing expert. Workers can record their observations in their preferred languages, which are then translated into the official company language with Microsoft Azure AI.

"The integration of AI into technology platforms will profoundly change how we work and how every business operates," said Scott Guthrie, executive vice president of cloud and AI at Microsoft, in a statement. "With Siemens, we are bringing the power of AI to more industrial organizations, enabling them to simplify workflows, overcome silos, and collaborate in more inclusive ways to accelerate customer-centric innovation."

"Powerful, advanced artificial intelligence is emerging as one of the most important technologies for digital transformation," said Cedrik Neike, a member of the managing board of Siemens and CEO Digital Industries, in a statement. "Siemens and Microsoft are coming together to deploy tools like ChatGPT so we can empower workers at enterprises of all sizes to collaborate and innovate in new ways."