Microsoft partners with BMW to build car systems in ‘smart factories’

BMW has big plans for its iNext electric and fully autonomous vehicle, but making the car will require a streamlined, coordinated, and automated manufacturing system — something Microsoft wants to help them build. 

On Tuesday, BMW and Microsoft announced a partnership to launch a new open-sourced industrial manufacturing platform called the Open Manufacturing Platform, or OMP. It’s based on Microsoft’s Azure, which BMW already uses to run its more than 3,000 machines at 30 production and assembly sites around the world.

It wasn’t immediately clear how much money each company is putting into the partnership.

The OMP is meant to make self-driving systems in a simplified and more cost-efficient way and could eventually help with other things, like digital supply chain management and predictive maintenance.

It’s all about creating the ultimate “smart factory.” To achieve automated, connected machines, the sample code for one product — say, a self-driving component — will be available in the open-sourced reference platform. With everything open and available, different teams and eventually other companies can piggyback off proven systems.

Microsoft and BMW are the first partners to use the OMP, but the plan is for four to six companies to use it by the end of the year. Even companies that aren’t building self-driving cars can join what the OMP is calling its “community.”