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Digital engineering

Organizations often face big challenges bringing new products to market, like slow development cycles, high costs, and products that don't meet customer expectations. These issues are compounded by the need to balance innovation with operational stability, all while tracking the impact of process changes. Such pain points can hinder competitiveness and delay time-to-market, making it essential for businesses to adopt more agile and customer-centric approaches.

Manufacturers can overcome these challenges with solutions that speed innovation and streamline product launches. The solutions include platforms that foster secure collaboration among internal teams and external partners, enabling faster decision-making and alignment. Additionally, tools that enhance efficiency—such as automation, simulation, and digital twin technologies—can significantly reduce the costs associated with product development and market introduction.

Microsoft for Manufacturing helps manufacturers unlock innovation and integrate digital engineering principles, transforming how new products are conceived, designed, and delivered through advanced technologies and connected digital processes. Digital engineering is a key asset in the toolbox for driving down costs and enhancing quality. It includes computer-aided design, simulation, manufacturing process management, and performance analytics.

Use Microsoft for Manufacturing to evolve your technology roadmap and adopt AI, mixed reality, digital twins, and edge-to-cloud. This approach establishes a comprehensive digital loop of your assets and operations, incorporating every stage from design to delivery.

Microsoft for Manufacturing helps businesses to achieve key outcomes such as increased product line profitability, reduced R&D and launch expenses, and improved customer satisfaction. These results not only strengthen financial performance but also enhance brand loyalty and market responsiveness, positioning companies for sustained growth in a competitive landscape.

The following scenarios offer a set of solutions that help manufacturers ideate, design, prototype, test, manage and validate their products digitally, collaboratively, efficiently, and transparently.

Enable intelligent digital threads

An intelligent digital thread is a connected data framework that integrates information, processes, and people across the entire manufacturing lifecycle—from design and engineering to production, service, and disposal. It acts as the nervous system of industrial operations, enabling real-time visibility, traceability, and decision-making across traditionally siloed systems.

An intelligent digital thread facilitates knowledge sharing across all stages of a product's lifecycle, effectively "closing the loop”. This communication results in improved data continuity, cross-department collaboration, and overall enhanced processes. Azure provides world-class security, edge technology, IoT support, and high-performance and confidential computing. Its AI and ML capabilities unlock insights from the data processed in the Digital Thread.

Microsoft’s intelligent digital thread strategy integrates data across operational (OT), information (IT), and engineering (ET) systems to enable real-time insights, predictive analytics, and process optimization to help product developers reduce cycle times and time-to-market by enabling real-time collaboration across design, engineering, and manufacturing teams. This is especially valuable for high-performance computing (HPC) use cases in simulation and modeling.

Using intelligent digital threads enable manufacturers to:

  • Unify data flow across CAD, PLM, ERP, MES, and other systems
  • Enable bi-directional communication between digital and physical assets
  • Get role-based contextualization of data for decision empowerment
  • Scale to manage growing data volumes
  • Integrate AI for predictive insights, automation, and optimization

The key Microsoft technologies that support intelligent digital threads are:

The following partner solutions, certified for Microsoft for Manufacturing, support intelligent digital threads and are available on Microsoft AppSource.

These solutions are certified by the Microsoft AI Cloud Partner Program and meet Microsoft standards for data accessibility in manufacturing. For details, see Appendix: Certified partner solutions for Microsoft for Manufacturing.

Can't find your solution? Go to Microsoft AppSource for a full list of ISV solutions.

Accelerate R&D and product design

R&D and product design solutions on the cloud are transforming the way manufacturers design, produce, and bring products to market. By using the power of cloud-based design tools and collaboration platforms, manufacturers can optimize their product development processes, reduce time-to-market, and improve overall product quality. An Azure cloud environment integrated with product lifecycle management (PLM), computer-aided design (CAD), and simulation tools from ISV partners provides a comprehensive, connected, and efficient approach to manufacturing design and product lifecycle management.

The top R&D and product design use cases supported by Microsoft include:

  • PLM on Azure: PLM solutions help manufacturers manage their digital product definition and configuration across the manufacturing lifecycle from a single source of truth. It enables greater engineering collaboration during the product development phases and boosts operational efficiency with increased speed to market. Manufacturers can migrate on-premises PLM solutions to Azure and use advanced analytics, while reducing overall infrastructure and maintenance costs. The scalability and flexibility of Azure allows organizations to easily manage product data and workflows, integrate with other business systems, and adapt to changing business needs.

  • CAD on Azure: The integration of PLM systems on Azure streamlines management of design assets across their lifecycle, from initial design to end of life. This approach accelerates workflows, product development, and innovation, showing the value of design on Azure for manufacturing. Azure provides cloud infrastructure, tools, and services that enhance manufacturing design. It's compatible with many CAD applications, so you choose the tools that suit your needs. High-performance GPUs on Azure speed up rendering and simulation. Cloud-based collaboration lets distributed teams share and edit CAD models in real time, improving efficiency.

  • Azure Database Migration : Transitioning to full stack Azure SQL databases with Azure SQL Managed Instance is a transformative move for organizations, offering a highly scalable, secure, and cost-effective platform for running business-critical applications. The shift to Azure SQL databases eliminates the need for significant hardware investments, diminishes maintenance costs, and boosts overall application performance. Azure SQL databases are recognized for their security measures and reliable performance when operating applications. They're designed to offer solid protection for your data against both unauthorized access and various cybersecurity threats. The migration process to Azure SQL databases is highly flexible and can be easily tailored to cater to the unique needs of your organization, ensuring minimal downtime and disruption. For more information, see Azure Database Migration Guides.

The key Microsoft technologies that support R&D and product design use cases are:

The following partner solutions certified for Microsoft for Manufacturing support the R&D and product design use cases described earlier and are available on Microsoft AppSource.

These solutions are certified with the Microsoft AI Cloud Partner Program and meet the Microsoft standards of data accessibility specific to the manufacturing industry. To learn more about the Microsoft for Manufacturing certified partner solutions and the Microsoft AI Cloud Partner Program, see Appendix: Certified partner solutions for Microsoft for Manufacturing.

Can't find your solution? Go to Microsoft AppSource for a full list of ISV solutions.

Evolve connected and software defined products

Connected and software defined products refers to the strategic transformation of traditional hardware-centric products into intelligent, connected systems that are primarily driven by software. These products are designed to be configurable, interoperable, and user-centric, allowing for enhanced automation, adaptability, and integration across ecosystems. This evolution enables manufacturers to:

  • Embed connectivity and intelligence into products using IoT and AI.
  • Enable real-time data exchange, predictive analytics, and remote management.
  • Deliver new business models, such as servitization, over-the-air updates, and subscription-based features.
  • Continuously improve product performance through software updates without altering physical components.

The top use cases for connected and software defined products include:

  • Connected Product Platforms: These platforms unify field device data with core systems to generate actionable insights across operations, engineering, marketing, and R&D.
  • Software Requirements Engineering with AI: Accelerates development cycles, improves quality, and reduces time-to-market.
  • Digital Feedback Loops: Enable continuous improvement by integrating data from devices, therapies, and environments to optimize safety, personalization, and asset tracking.
  • Product Lifecycle Management (PLM): Cloud-based PLM tools support agile design, simulation, and collaboration, transforming how manufacturers bring products to market.

The key Microsoft technologies that support connected and software defined products uses cases are:

The following partner solutions certified for Microsoft for Manufacturing support the connected and software defined products use cases described earlier and are available on Microsoft AppSource.

These solutions are certified with the Microsoft AI Cloud Partner Program and meet the Microsoft standards of data accessibility specific to the manufacturing industry. To learn more about the Microsoft for Manufacturing certified partner solutions and the Microsoft AI Cloud Partner Program, see Appendix: Certified partner solutions for Microsoft for Manufacturing.

Can't find your solution? Go to Microsoft AppSource for a full list of ISV solutions.