Sight Machine Inc. today announced the release of Factory CoPilot, democratizing industrial data through the power of generative artificial intelligence. By integrating Sight Machine’s Manufacturing Data Platform with Microsoft Azure OpenAI Service, Factory CoPilot brings unprecedented ease of access to manufacturing problem solving, analysis and reporting.
Using a natural language user interface similar to ChatGPT, Factory CoPilot offers an intuitive, “ask the expert” experience for all manufacturing stakeholders, regardless of data proficiency. In response to a single question, Factory CoPilot can automatically summarize all relevant data and information about production in real-time (e.g., for daily meetings) and generate user-friendly reports, emails, charts and other content (in any language) about the performance of any machine, line or plant across the manufacturing enterprise, based on contextualized data in the Sight Machine platform.
Factory CoPilot guides users through root cause analysis and drill-down investigation for faster diagnosis of issues. Streaming data from across machines, lines and plants enables continuous system-wide analysis and insights, identifying the causes of unplanned downtime, slow-running machines or quality issues, and enabling continuous manufacturing process improvement. Factory CoPilot empowers team members with real-time results and insights from production queries, such as KPI reporting, performance comparisons, trend and correlation analyses, data source availability reports, and recommendations on optimal settings and production recipes.
“Sight Machine’s Manufacturing Data Platform has been a critical part of IPG’s success in using data to continuously improve and scale manufacturing productivity. We value Sight Machine’s leadership in bringing generative AI to manufacturing together with Microsoft,” said Jai Sundararaman, Chief Transformation Officer leading Innovation & Digital Transformation, Intertape Polymer Group Inc. (IPG). “Factory CoPilot has the potential to dramatically expand the reach and impact of our data-driven transformation initiatives, empowering our front-line with easy to use tools and valuable insights to enhance decision making and operations.”
Sight Machine’s Manufacturing Data Platform Offers A Single Source of Truth on Production
The power of Factory CoPilot is based on its integration with Sight Machine’s Manufacturing Data Platform (MDP), which captures the entire manufacturing process in a single, secure industrial data foundation, contextualizing all plant data and incorporating data from all sensors, machines, lines and plants operated by a company. MDP automates the process of blending and transforming streaming data from all manufacturing data sources, enabling system-level understanding of production, and uses AI to continuously enrich the data foundation with new levels of insight.
Because Factory CoPilot draws its information from the fully contextualized data foundation that Sight Machine’s platform creates for each manufacturing customer, users can be confident that the results are complete and accurate, without worrying about the “hallucinations” that generative AI systems can invent when they lack real data. All generative output is backed by validated source references to increase trust and empower confidence, enabling a bias for action. At all times, the underlying data and generated results are protected and remain secure, exclusively available within each customer's managed Azure environment.
“Generative AI has immense potential in manufacturing, but AI can’t work with raw factory data,” said Sight Machine CEO and Co-Founder Jon Sobel. “In order to transform manufacturing in a way that is scalable, affordable and manageable, AI needs the fully contextualized data that Sight Machine’s universal data foundation provides. We look forward to working closely with clients and our partners at Microsoft to make this technology widely available.”
Sight Machine’s integration of Microsoft Azure OpenAI Service continues a multi-year collaboration that helps manufacturers around the world transform their business and unlock new levels of productivity and sustainability with leading cloud, data and AI-powered technology. On July 18, Sight Machine was certified as a launch partner for Microsoft Cloud for Manufacturing, and in October 2022, Sight Machine introduced Sight Machine Blueprint, developed in collaboration with NVIDIA and Microsoft, which uses AI for high-speed, automated data labeling, enabling manufacturers to analyze up to 100x more of their data.
“Microsoft and its ecosystem are committed to Industrial Metaverse and making the deep investments needed to support global industry transformation,” said Çağlayan Arkan, Vice President, Global Sales Lead, Industrial Metaverse Strategy and Sales, Manufacturing and Supply Chain at Microsoft. “We are proud to collaborate and innovate with Sight Machine as together we bring practical, useful solutions to the world’s factories and plants.”