GCP – Unlock AI with IT and OT data powered by Manufacturing Data Engine with Cortex Framework

Breaking down the data silos between IT (business data) and OT (industrial data) is critical for manufacturers seeking to harness the power of AI for competitive advantage. This week, at Hannover Messe, Google Cloud is excited to announce the latest release of its signature solution, Manufacturing Data Engine, to help manufacturers unlock the full potential of their operational data and drive AI transformation on-and-off the factory floor faster.

In 2024, we delivered a number of enhancements to MDE to strengthen the integration between OT and IT data, and with initial technical foundation extensions for MDE to integrate with Cortex Framework. At the same time, the adoption of Cortex Framework, which helps customers accelerate business insights into their enterprise IT data, has grown beyond the traditional enterprise IT data sources from ERP, CRM, and ESG, to marketing and social media, and more.

Building on our progress, this latest MDE release completes our IT/OT integration journey and introduces powerful new features: Development Mode, historical metadata linking, Configuration Packages, to enable better data grounding of IT and OT data to drive faster AI outcomes. These advancements empower manufacturers to unlock deeper insights and achieve more with their data.

Accelerating innovation with Development Mode: With Development Mode, manufacturers have more flexibility to delete configuration objects, which is particularly valuable in development and proof-of-concept (PoC) environments. This helps accelerate the innovation cycle by making it easier and less time-consuming to experiment with new data models.

Ingest time-shifted data with historical metadata linking: This feature uses event-time to map the correct metadata instances, which are extended with a “valid from” timestamp. This means manufacturers can load historical data at a later date and MDE will insert it into the right place in the timeline, ensuring accurate historical data representation of your data. This is helpful for manufacturers who need to load data out of order, and in turn makes it easier to analyze historical trends and patterns to optimize their operations.

Streamlining IT and OT with Configuration Packages: MDE Configuration Packages provide a powerful new way to merge factory floor data with your core enterprise systems by creating and packaging industry and use case-specific MDE configurations. Manufacturers can bridge the IT and OT gap, packaging their OT data from MDE in predictable schemas for integration within Cortex Framework alongside supply chain, marketing, finance, and sustainability data.

These powerful new features along with faster IT and OT data integration unlock a spectrum of transformative use-cases.

For example, manufacturers can visualize optimizing production schedules based on real-time demand signals from their marketing campaigns, or accurately forecast financial impacts by correlating machine performance with ERP financial data. They can enhance sustainability initiatives by analyzing energy consumption alongside production output.

By contextualizing multimodal data from machines, sensors, and cameras with data from Cortex Framework, manufacturers gain a truly holistic view of their operations.

Unlocking new Gen AI use cases

Previously, manufacturers could combine OT data using MDE with Google AI services for things like faster issue resolution with ML-based anomaly detection, or flexible and scalable visual quality control.

With this release, we’re enabling even more possibilities for manufacturing intelligence by making it easier and faster to unify IT and OT data to use in grounding large language models (LLMs) for generative AI applications. Conversational Analytics lets you chat with your BigQuery data, Sheets, Looker Explores/Reports/Dashboards and more for generative analytics and insights. Imagine getting current open support cases from your customer support system, spotting an outlier, and being able to immediately ask for and trace the outlier part through to the production quality data from your factory floor to isolate the issue.

By building on this latest release of MDE with Cortex Framework, in combination with Google Cloud’s AI capabilities, manufacturers can receive immediate, data-driven insights, empowering you to make smarter, faster decisions across your entire value chain.

Partner ecosystem: Driving customer success with Deloitte

We’re proud to work with a robust ecosystem of partners who are instrumental in helping our customers achieve their digital transformation goals in manufacturing.

We’re especially excited to announce that Deloitte has launched a packaged services offering for our latest MDE release, enabling customers to quickly leverage the new capabilities with services delivered by a trusted partner. Contact Deloitte to learn more, or visit their demo stand at the Google Cloud booth at Hannover Messe and at Google Cloud Next to understand how they can help you with your initiatives.

Looking ahead

Our latest release of MDE represents a significant milestone in our journey to empower manufacturers with the tools they need to thrive in the digital age. We’re committed to continuous innovation and look forward to partnering with you on your industrial transformation journey.

Stay tuned for more updates and insights from Google Cloud.

See it in action at Hannover Messe and Google Cloud Next ‘25 

We’re excited to showcase this latest release at two major industry events:

• Hannover Messe: Visit our booth to see live demonstrations of new features and learn how MDE can help you drive industrial transformation.

• Google Cloud Next: Join us at the Industry Showcase (Manufacturing) Booth to explore the latest advancements in our data and AI platforms, including Manufacturing Data Engine, or join one of our Manufacturing-focused sessions.