Hannover (Germany), Apr 3 (IANS): In a bid to drive open industrial IoT development and build future Industry 4.0 solutions, Microsoft and the BMW Group have announced a new Open Manufacturing Platform.

The initiative is expected to support the development of smart factory solutions that will be shared by participants across the automotive and broader manufacturing sectors.

Built on the Microsoft Azure industrial Internet of Things (IoT) cloud platform, the initiative would provide community members with a reference architecture with open source components based on open industrial standards and an open data model.

"Microsoft is joining forces with the BMW Group to transform digital production efficiency across the industry," Scott Guthrie, Executive Vice President, Microsoft Cloud + AI Group, said in a statement late on Tuesday.

With currently over 3,000 machines, robots and autonomous transport systems connected with the BMW Group IoT platform, which is built on Microsoft Azure's cloud, IoT and Artificial intelligence (AI) capabilities, the BMW Group plans to contribute relevant initial use cases to the community.

"We have been relying on the cloud since 2016 and are consistently developing new approaches.

"With the Open Manufacturing Platform as the next step, we want to jointly leverage potential in order to secure our strong position in the market in the long term," said Oliver Zipse, member of the Board of Management of BMW AG, Production.