Microsoft and its partners accelerate industrial AI innovations at ITAP 2025 and Microsoft Ignite 2025, driving manufacturing innovation and collaboration worldwide.
Another year of Hannover Messe is now behind us. While we missed the personal interactions we all value, one thing is clear: The thought leadership, the new ideas, and the excitement for innovation remain as strong as ever across the industry.
Its been a challenging year for manufacturers, but also an exciting one, as they’ve been able to respond and adapt by accelerating their digital transformation journeys—and as you’ll hear from Microsoft leaders, customers, and partners at Hannover Messe 2021: Digital Edition—the benefits of digitalization are no longer questioned, it’s now about accelerating time to value,.
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This blog has been co-authored with Yury Gomez, Business Strategy Leader, WW Manufacturing While the manufacturing industry has long been one of the leaders driving digital innovation, helping to fuel growth and redefine efficiencies, today’s disruptions—whether these are travel restrictions, increased health & safety precautions, or a new world of modern work—are challenging the traditional approaches used to facilitate agile process.
It’s been two years since we last invited you to join us at Hannover Messe in Germany, where we mingled with 220,000 of our manufacturing colleagues from around the world to share and explore the leadership and innovations on display.
As I reflect on our customers’ and partners’ achievements in such trying times, their successes and innovations inspire me. Looking ahead, I’m both optimistic and excited as the industry continues its forward momentum. I’d like to highlight a few recent examples of our collaboration with leaders in the industry.
Filled with unimaginable change caused by the pandemic, the manufacturing industry witnessed a perfect storm: a significant disruption in terms of business continuity, operational visibility, remote work, employee safety, and the list goes on. However, manufacturers have responded and are continually adapting as we all go through the recovery process.
Through its four-decade partnership with leaders in the automotive industry, there’s one core learning that Microsoft continues to see: with challenge comes increased opportunity for innovation. For vehicle makers, this has meant turning the business model upside down, redefining an industry, and working at a blistering pace transforming from traditional manufacturers to mobility service providers.
Can digitization address the manufacturing skills gap and worker safety? Even before the pandemic, manufacturing has been changing so quickly that it can be difficult for your workforce to keep up. In fact, Deloitte and the Manufacturing Institute had estimated that up to 2.4 million US manufacturing jobs could remain unfilled between 2018 and 2028 because of a lack of adequate skills.
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Think of an automotive manufacturer and you might picture huge factories, large production lines, robotic assembly, and innumerable mechanical parts. But it’s what lies underneath all these things that’s driving the future of automotive and mobility and the companies behind it: software.
The global marketplace is evolving rapidly, and the ability to adapt is a defining factor between manufacturers that merely survive, and those that thrive. As rising costs, supply chain issues, skills gaps, and challenges related to COVID-19 escalate, manufacturers must look to intelligent cloud and intelligent edge solutions to build smart, agile factories.
