Microsoft (MSFT) And Honeywell (HON) Partner On AI-Driven Autonomous Controls

By Amit Chowdhry • Oct 23, 2020
  • This week, Microsoft Corporation (NASDAQ: MSFT) and Honeywell International Inc. (NYSE: HON) have formed a new collaboration. These are the details.

This week, Microsoft Corporation (NASDAQ: MSFT) and Honeywell International Inc. (NYSE: HON) have formed a new collaboration. project. The two companies will be bringing to market its domain-specific applications built on the Microsoft cloud platform to drive new levels of productivity for industrial clients.

Through the integration of the AI-driven autonomous controls of the Honeywell Forge enterprise performance management software with Microsoft Dynamics 365 Field Service, customers can access operating data that includes workflow management support for improving performance and energy efficiency within the enterprise environment. And workers in the field will benefit from real-time access to critical data that will help them prioritize, analyze, and solve problems more quickly.

The first area of focus will be to automate maintenance for building owners and operators. And to optimize their buildings’ energy, performance, and comfort, they often need to pull data from a variety of sources that are not normalized and inform remote and dispersed workforces. The facility managers must determine what problem to fix, when to fix it, and who to assign to the job — which can be very difficult without having the necessary asset know-how and work order management capability.

Honeywell Forge delivers cost savings, improved energy efficiency, and a better occupant experience to customers. For example: At Crown Towers Perth in Australia, the Honeywell Forge Digitized Maintenance solution provided faster inputs on potential maintenance issues compared to traditional annual maintenance schedules and helped reduce reactive work orders by 90%.

For the heating, ventilation, and air conditioning (HVAC) operation alone – which is known to account for up to 60% of total energy consumption in commercial buildings – an AI-automated account system like Honeywell Forge Energy Optimization can save between 10% and 20% in energy costs.

Dynamics 365 Field Service enables companies to remotely detect and address potential issues early to avoid unnecessary downtime or operational inefficiencies by analyzing IoT data and to improve proactive service offerings through AI-infused IoT alerts and work orders. Utilizing the global scale of Microsoft’s cloud will enable Honeywell to quickly bring new offerings to market while helping customers meet regional security, privacy and compliance requirements.

The two companies are also exploring more ways to bring innovation to customers by integrating Honeywell Forge solutions with Azure services such as Azure Digital Twins and Azure edge capabilities. Digital twins enables businesses to easily model and create digital representations of connected physical environments to deliver products that meet fast-changing market needs while saving operational costs. Using edge computing, customers can run AI, machine learning, and business processes directly across plants, warehouses, machines, and appliances for quicker actions without the need for a constant internet connection.

KEY QUOTES:

“Honeywell’s partnership with Microsoft will deliver new value to our customers as we help them solve business challenges by digitizing their operations. Working with Microsoft, Honeywell will bring solutions at scale – powered by AI-driven insights and immediate access to data – that will help our customers work more efficiently than ever before.”

— Que Dallara, president and CEO, Honeywell Connected Enterprise

“To achieve resilient operations and sustainable growth, businesses need to partner to fully unlock the opportunities of cloud, AI and IoT technologies. By integrating Honeywell and Microsoft services, companies turn IoT data into critical business insights and actions to optimize operations and deliver new customer value faster.”

— Judson Althoff, executive vice president, Microsoft’s Worldwide Commercial Business