Three of the world’s leading specialists on industrial innovation have joined forces to  launch a new solution that will help manufacturers achieve a 90% reduction in development time and increased speed to market.

PTC, Microsoft and Rockwell Automation unveiled ‘Factory Insights as a Service’ this week in front of tens of thousands of delegates at the virtual LiveWorxÒ 2020 digital transformation, with the promise of giving companies unprecedented impact, speed and scale with their digital transformation initiatives.

The turnkey cloud solution harnesses FactoryTalk® InnovationSuite, ThingWorx®, Kepware®, and Vuforia® technology, whilst also leveraging Microsoft’s cloud, industrial IoT and edge services, including Azure IoT Hub and Azure IoT Edge.

This enables manufacturers - across a variety of sectors - to rapidly connect individual sites and implement projects across their enterprise network, covering real-time production performance monitoring, asset monitoring and utilisation, connected work cells and digital and augmented work instructions.

“‘Factory Insights as a Service’ offers our industrial customers a leaner, accelerated approach to digital transformation,” said Jim Heppelmann, President and CEO of PTC.

“The offering reduces reliance on IT and Operational Technologies resources, and, most importantly, takes a value-first approach allowing customers to save time and money by reducing the complexity they would typically undertake as part of an industrial internet of things (IIoT) implementation and digital transformation effort.”

In today’s digital-first environment, manufacturers require solutions that solve complex infrastructure issues, data accessibility challenges and reduced resources.

With ‘Factory Insights as a Service’, manufacturers can achieve a 90% reduction in development time and cost and as much as 90% faster time-to-value for the most critical high-value use cases underpinning industrial digital transformation.

“Simplifying and accelerating digital transformation initiatives for our clients is a fundamental driver for our alliances with PTC and Microsoft,” said Blake Moret, Chairman and CEO of Rockwell Automation.

“‘Factory Insights as a Service’ builds on the breakthrough capabilities of FactoryTalk InnovationSuite to quickly operationalise some of the most critical use cases improving production, asset and workforce efficiency, while future-proofing our customers’ digital transformation roadmap.”

Jason Zander, Executive Vice President Microsoft Azure at Microsoft, concluded: “We believe in the power of collaborations to help manufacturing companies accelerate the delivery of value to their customers and unlock new business opportunities.

“By teaming up with PTC and Rockwell Automation to converge IT and Operational Technologies excellence, we empower businesses to rapidly deploy their relevant use cases at scale - from asset, workforce, and production floor performance to accelerate impact across the global production network.”

To learn more about ‘Factory Insights as a Service’, click https://www.ptc.com/en/resources/manufacturing/webcast/factory-insight-as-a-service