Procter & Gamble and Microsoft have announced plans to extend their collaboration on manufacturing technology. P&G’s new investments in Azure services aim to meet new goals around quality, resilience, and sustainability.

The companies will build on their existing partnership that includes investment in Azure IoT Hub and IoT Edge, HoloLens2, and Dynamics 365 Remote Assist for various scenarios like production line maintenance and production optimization in P&G’s baby care and paper product areas, they announced today.

With the new plans, P&G aims to digitize and integrate data from manufacturing sites around the world, according to the companies.

The corporation’s new IoT and edge analytics initiative will include:

• Checking quality in real-time on the production line
• Improving resilience by watching for early signs and early warnings of problems on different parts of the production lines and increasing preventative maintenance
• Adding AI & ML to better control energy and water consumption and optimize material use on production lines

Some of the more specific goals the companies identified in their announcement will include: