Germany - ZF Friedrichshafen AG is joining the Open Manufacturing Platform (OMP), which was announced in 2019 by the BMW Group and Microsoft. The aim of this initiative is to enable faster and more cost-effective innovations in the manufacturing industry. The OMP technology framework and community are designed to nurture the development of smart-factory solutions across the sector. Sharing knowledge and utilising industrial use cases and sample code, OMP members will be empowered to simplify and accelerate the development of their own services and solutions.

Seamless data sharing remains a vision, since many data sources first need to be connected and interlinked within a company, and then extended to partners and external entities. ZF is working actively in improving Industry 4.0 maturity towards smart factories, one major aspect is the seamless data integration via open and interoperable platforms and processes. The OMP aims to provide community members with a reference architecture with open source components based on open industrial standards.