Honeywell and Google Cloud have announced a collaboration aimed at enhancing industrial automation by combining Artificial Intelligence (AI) with Honeywell's IoT platform. The partnership will integrate Google Cloud's AI capabilities, including the Gemini AI agent on Vertex AI, with the Honeywell Forge IoT platform to deliver real-time insights and automation across various industries.
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Transforming Industrial Operations with AI-Powered Agents
According to the official release, this partnership aims to improve maintenance, boost productivity, and address labour shortages, particularly as the industrial sector faces challenges due to the mass retirement of baby boomers. Honeywell and Google will develop AI-powered agents to automate tasks, reduce design cycles, and assist engineers with real-time data analysis.
"This partnership will bring together the multimodality and natural language capabilities of Gemini on Vertex AI—Google Cloud’s AI platform—and the massive data set on Honeywell Forge. This will unleash easy-to-understand, enterprise-wide insights across a multitude of use cases. Honeywell's customers across the industrial sector will benefit from opportunities to reduce maintenance costs, increase operational productivity, and upskill employees," the official release said Monday.
"The path to autonomy requires assets working harder, people working smarter and processes working more efficiently," said Vimal Kapur, Chairman and CEO of Honeywell. "By combining Google Cloud’'s AI technology with our deep domain expertise-including valuable data on our Honeywell Forge platform-customers will receive unparalleled, actionable insights bridging the physical and digital worlds to accelerate autonomous operations, a key driver of Honeywell’s growth."
"Our partnership with Honeywell represents a significant step forward in bringing the transformative power of AI to industrial operations," said Thomas Kurian, CEO of Google Cloud. "With Gemini on Vertex AI, combined with Honeywell's industrial data and expertise, we're creating new opportunities to optimise processes, empower workforces and drive meaningful business outcomes for industrial organisations worldwide."
Solutions Set to Launch in 2025
The first solutions built with Google Cloud AI will be available to Honeywell's customers in 2025. These solutions will optimise processes and upskill workforces, helping companies across the industrial sector advance toward safer, more autonomous operations.
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Insights from Industrial AI Insights report
Announcing the partnership, Honeywell, in a joint statement, said that with the mass retirement of workers from the baby boomer generation, the industrial sector faces both labor and skills shortages, and AI can be part of the solution—as a revenue generator, not a job eliminator.
According to Honeywell's 2024 Industrial AI Insights report, more than two-thirds (82 percent) of Industrial AI leaders believe their companies are early adopters of AI, but only 17 percent have fully launched their initial AI plans.
Honeywell and Google Cloud will co-innovate solutions in the following areas:
AI-Powered Agents for Industrial Workflows
The partnership will leverage Google Cloud's Vertex AI to create purpose-built AI agents designed to automate engineering tasks and reduce project cycles. By incorporating large language models (LLMs) from Google, the AI will assist technicians in resolving issues quickly by processing diverse data, including images, videos, and sensor readings for complex troubleshooting, the companies said.
Examples include inquiries such as: How did a unit perform last night? How do I replace the input/output module? or Why is my system making this sound?
Cybersecurity and Edge Device Innovation
Honeywell's cybersecurity tools, including GARD Threat Intelligence and Secure Media Exchange (SMX), will be enhanced by Google Cloud's Mandiant threat intelligence to improve threat detection and protect global infrastructure for industrial customers, the official release said.
Looking ahead, Honeywell plans to explore using Google's Gemini Nano to enhance intelligence in edge devices, enabling offline operations for tasks such as maintenance and alarms.
"This is the beginning of a new wave of more intelligent devices and solutions, which will be the subject of future Honeywell announcements," the company said.
