Honeywell, TCS partner to promote IT-OT convergence

Honeywell announced a partnership with India-headquartered Tata Consultancy Services to help building operators accelerate AI-driven autonomous operations by converging IT and OT through a unified digital foundation for industrial and manufacturing environments. 

The partnership aims to combine Honeywell’s expertise in OT automation, control systems and AI-powered analytics with IT, cloud computing and consulting capabilities from TCS through integrating IT and OT into a single infrastructure. 

See also: IT-OT convergence as a driver for manufacturing innovation 

The companies will work together to create a unified digital foundation for real-time visibility, predictive intelligence, and autonomous process control. The single infrastructure aims to help operators optimize processes and deploy AI‑powered autonomous operations to help customers make faster, more informed decisions, according to Honeywell. 

“Our customers run incredibly complex operations. Historically, OT and IT have been run as separate domains, but with new capabilities in 5G connectivity, cloud computing and AI, we can now accelerate the OT/IT convergence to improve operations and data analysis through one cohesive system,” said Ashish Modi, president of Honeywell India and Asia Pacific. 

“This is anticipated to make it easier for our building and industrial customers to run their operations with greater safety, efficiency and agility and reveal new actionable insights on the performance of their infrastructure.” 

Benefits of the partnership for manufacturers include improved operational efficiency and productivity through real-time visibility across IT and OT environments and scalable manufacturing systems supported by cloud-based IT-OT convergence, allowing manufacturers to deploy AI-driven capabilities and improve business outcomes, according to the companies.

See also: Bridging the divide: Unifying IT and OT in U.S. manufacturing 

The partnership also aims to promote higher asset uptime through AI-powered analytics through Honeywell Forge for Industrial software, and to promote swifter adoption of autonomous manufacturing operations. 

See also: Survey: AI adoption continues apace, despite uncertainties and failure risk 

The focus on having a singular infrastructure comes as other experts advise manufacturers to have a unified platform when implementing AI into factory and business settings to reduce the need for complex integrations, consolidate data and improve visibility, SI reported earlier this month.