Google Cloud AI to enhance Honeywell’s product offerings and help upskill the industrial workforce. New solutions will connect to enterprise-wide industrial data from Honeywell Forge, a leading IoT platform for industrials.
Honeywell and Google Cloud are collaborating on connecting AI agents with assets, people and processes to accelerate safer, autonomous operations for the industrial sector.
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, a leading Internet of Things (IoT) platform for industrials. 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 first solutions built with Google Cloud AI will be available to Honeywell’s customers in 2025.
“The path to autonomy requires assets working harder, people working smarter and processes working more efficiently,” said Vimal Kapur, Chairman and CEO, 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.”
Thomas Kurian, CEO, Google Cloud, said: “Our partnership with Honeywell represents a significant step forward in bringing the transformative power of AI to industrial operations.
“With Gemini on Vertex AI, combined with Honeywell’s industrial data and expertise, we’re creating new opportunities to optimize processes, empower workforces and drive meaningful business outcomes for industrial organizations worldwide.”
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 job eliminator.
More than two-thirds (82%) of Industrial AI leaders believe their companies are early adopters of AI – but only 17% have fully launched their initial AI plans, according to Honeywell’s 2024 Industrial AI Insights report.
This partnership is pitched as providing AI agents that augment the existing operations and workforce to help drive AI adoption and enable companies across the sector to benefit from expanding automation.
Honeywell and Google Cloud will co-innovate solutions around:
Purpose-Built, Industrial AI Agents
Built on Google Cloud’s Vertex AI Search and tailored to engineers’ specific needs, a new AI-powered agent will help automate tasks and reduce project design cycles, enabling users to focus on driving innovation and delivering exceptional customer experiences.
Additional agents will utilize Google’s large language models (LLMs) to help technicians to more quickly resolve maintenance issues (e.g., “How did a unit perform last night?” “How do I replace the input/output module?” or “Why is my system making this sound?”). By leveraging Gemini’s multimodality capabilities, users will be able to process various data types such as images, videos, text and sensor readings, which will help its engineers get the answers they need quickly – going beyond simple chat and predictions.
Enhanced Cybersecurity
Google Threat Intelligence – featuring frontline insight from Mandiant – will be integrated into current Honeywell cybersecurity products, including Global Analysis, Research and Defense (GARD) Threat Intelligence and Secure Media Exchange (SMX), to help enhance threat detection and protect global infrastructure for industrial customers.
On-the-Edge Device Advances
Looking ahead, Honeywell will explore using Google’s Gemini Nano model to enhance Honeywell edge AI devices’ intelligence multiple use cases across verticals, ranging from scanning performance to voice-based guided workflow, maintenance, operational and alarm assist without the need to connect to the internet and cloud. This is the beginning of a new wave of more intelligent devices and solutions, which will be the subject of future Honeywell announcements.
By leveraging AI to enable growth and productivity, the integration of Google Cloud technology also further supports Honeywell’s alignment of its portfolio to three compelling megatrends, including automation.
Edge AI tools to help devices monitor and process data
Honeywell’s devices are used worldwide in a range of settings – from data centers to hospitals to refineries to warehouses.
Internet access can often be challenging, especially in remote locations.
To solve this, Honeywell is exploring how to use Gemini Nano to provide AI services at the edge of the network – right on devices like scanners, sensors and controllers – so they can operate autonomously, even when they aren’t connected to the internet.
Gemini’s multimodal capabilities enable understanding of text, code, images, videos and audio, allowing Honeywell devices to process various data types, from scanning to voice-based guided workflow.
With Google AI-powered agents, Honeywell is helping bridge the skills gap and ensure the future of the industrial sector.
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