🟡 Microsoft Ignite spotlight: Teamcenter + Teams + OpenAI

By Michael Boland

🌊 Siemens makes a splash at Microsoft Ignite

Last month, Microsoft hosted their annual Ignite conference to highlight cutting edge collaboration and AI technology advancements. And one of the key highlights was the Teamcenter for Microsoft Teams app.

Spurred on by changing trends around remote work, there has been a rapid adoption of Microsoft Teams as a collaborative platform. Users across industries spend most of their days connecting and collaborating through both mobile and desktop versions of Teams. With this widespread adoption, Teams offers the perfect platform to meet Teamcenter users where they are at.

Teamcenter is a product lifecycle management (PLM) system used by engineering companies to manage data, workflows, and collaboration across the organization. It is a gateway to product information and allows employees to efficiently access, view, and interact with data and people from different departments. This means that Teamcenter users span the entire industrial enterprise and need various ways to access their vital product lifecycle data. Extending that access to the shop floor for mobile workers is key to staying ahead of the competition.

📈 Driving industrial productivity

The Teamcenter 2312 release introduces the Teamcenter for Microsoft Teams app, powered by Azure OpenAI. For many Teamcenter users, the mobile nature of their jobs means they spend most of their time away from a computer – especially workers on the manufacturing shop floor or service operations. The Teamcenter for Microsoft Teams app connects mobile workers to the enterprise, providing easy access and greater collaboration throughout the product lifecycle.

Leveraging the latest Azure OpenAI advances in generative AI and natural language processing, the Teamcenter for Microsoft Teams app utilizes a natural language-first interface. Frontline workers can connect with Teamcenter anywhere, and simply speaking in their native language, they can easily capture product or manufacturing issues, and close the loop with the engineering teams who can solve those issues.

🎯 Capture problem reports in real time, on any device

A key use case for Teamcenter users is that they can now capture and create problem reports or non-conformance reports inside of Teamcenter by speaking in their native language. OpenAI then translates and extracts important information out of the spoken report to populate the problem report on whatever device they are using.

Removing barriers to problem reporting not only improves operational efficiency but, in the end, results in a higher quality product.

Get Teamcenter workflow alerts + perform tasks, on any device 📲

As those problem reports are created, relevant users are then notified directly in the Teams app of what needs their attention in Teamcenter. From there they can view the report, jump directly into Teamcenter if need be or approve workflow tasks as they arise right from their phones.

With this improved collaboration across product development and manufacturing processes, teams from various departments can communicate and solve problems more efficiently, closing feedback loops faster than ever before. The impact of this app on the manufacturing process is significant, empowering millions of workers to easily submit problem reports, resulting in a reduction of quality issues and improved product design.

✅ Teamcenter for Microsoft Teams in action

Want to see it in more depth? Watch at our solution in action as a faulty electric car battery gripper causes a globe-spanning problem that takes cross-domain collaboration and the full power of the Siemens Xcelerator portfolio to find a solution: