Microsoft Fabric: Unify OT & IT Data for Smarter Manufacturing

December 4th, 2025 Intech Systems Microsoft Fabric

Introduction:

Manufacturers deal with two different systems in their production operations:

• Operational technology (OT) systems comprise the hardware and software that control the production process.
• Information technology (IT) systems comprise components such as ERP, SCM, CRM, data, and analytics that manage the business aspects.

So, OT manages the factory processes, while IT handles the business impact of OT.

If integrated, their data provides a comprehensive view of your operations to facilitate decision-making, improve efficiency, reduce downtime, and enhance collaboration. If not unified, your decisions are delayed, affecting your output, profit margins, and customer relationships.

Microsoft Fabric, with its data lake – OneLake and other capabilities – keeps one source of truth for consistency in operations. This enables efficient data collection, modeling, governance, analytics, and action, resulting in smooth operations.

Let’s explore how Microsoft Fabric for Manufacturing integrates OT and IT data in manufacturing and what impact it has on high-volume manufacturers’ operations.

Difficulties Faced by High-volume Manufacturers

Manufacturers generate a lot of data from machines, human interactions, sensors, and enterprise systems. Massive amounts of data in varied formats without interoperability make it a redundant asset. And this is commonly found in many manufacturing operations – disrespect for the data asset.

The primary reason is siloed OT and IT systems because of:

1. Separate departments and teams
2. Disjointed machines and equipment that form the IT and OT systems
3. Mis-aligned technologies
4. Different languages and contexts

Incoherent and unaligned data points from different systems do not generate a single, unified perspective of your manufacturing processes. This causes delays or inaccuracies in demand planning, inventory management, quality assurance, materials control, and supply, devaluing your manufacturing process.

Even the complex integration of tools and their business data becomes challenging. This results in time-consuming analytics, which, in turn, are a cost to the firm. Since manufacturing is a continuous process where each minute matters, such complexity and lags result in downtime, rework, or wastage.

No data unification means engineers working in factories and analysts employed in offices operate on different datasets, hindering cross-team collaboration. Such disjointed perspectives and attitudes also affect governance, risk management, accessibility controls, and compliance. Overall, siloed OT and IT data compromises operational stability, throughput, and efficiency.

While the OT ecosystem cannot endure production downtime and disruption to continuous output generation, the IT environment cannot compromise data quality, innovation, and system security. With diverging optimization objectives, aligning them is a challenging task more so, when you manufacture in high volumes.

Also Read: Advancing Manufacturing Operations With Microsoft Fabric: A CIO’s Perspective

Microsoft Fabric for Manufacturing: Features and Capabilities

Microsoft Fabric for Manufacturing is the absolute answer for your need for industrial data analytics.

Microsoft Fabric is an all-in-one analytics platform that streamlines your data flow across processes. Be it data collection, storage, breakdown, engineering, analysis, or visualization, Fabric manages it all to facilitate decision-making. Moreover, with the additional AI capabilities, you get simpler, faster, and valuable insights.

Fabric drives digital transformation on a strong foundation of data with the following features and functionalities:

1. Lakehouse concept to help store data and generate insights
2. An AI-driven manufacturing data platform for coordinated analytics, enhanced collaboration, and faster decision-making
3. Predictive algorithms to help analyze trends and forecast data in real time
4. High level of governance, security, and compliance capabilities
5. Copilot-led real-time data analysis, data visualizations, insightful reports, and multi-workload assistance

Benefits of Microsoft Fabric for High-volume Manufacturers: Unified OT and IT Data

As a data-intensive industry, manufacturing requires a solution that unifies all the data and utilizes it for insights, innovation, and transformation. Microsoft Fabric’s unified data estate and OneLake approach make it a perfect fit. Along with technology convergence, it also facilitates OT and IT’s team integration and process alignment.

The unified OT and IT data result in the following benefits:

Data Management

High-volume manufacturers produce a bulk of data. Fabric for manufacturing enables smooth data management involving collection, segregation, modeling, storage, and analysis to generate real-time insights. It routes data to different destinations for use in further function-specific analysis.

Single View of Operations

With all the data and smart factory analytics in one place, you can get a comprehensive view of your manufacturing operations. It helps you generate deep, granular-level insights, based on which you can optimize processes and make well-informed decisions.

Quality Decisions

Complex data interpretations, predictive analytics, and AI-generated insights using Microsoft Fabric for Manufacturing help manufacturers make timely decisions on the following:

1. Machinery maintenance
2. Employee training
3. Inventory management
4. Supply chain optimization
5. Demand forecasting
6. Quality control
7. Production flow

Cross-functional Collaboration

Unified data from ERP, shop floor, inventory, marketing, and other processes provides a comprehensive understanding. This assists collaboration and communication between different functions to make sense of data points and insights. Such teamwork between the technology and operational teams enables smoother workflows and faster decisions, increasing productivity and efficiency.

Preventive Action

Microsoft Fabric’s real-time analytics for industrial IoT capabilities help you take preventive action instead of a reactive fight. This is possible with the AI-led solution’s identification of product defects, supply issues, process errors, equipment faults, or non-compliance. Thus, you can implement corrective measures before these discrepancies occur to prevent downtime, wastage, and losses.

Business Impact: Digital Transformation in Manufacturing

Microsoft Fabric for Manufacturing integrates the contradictory goals and metrics of IT and OT systems. It creates a single flow of data and information to facilitate coordination and decision-making. With the right signals at the right time from Fabric, manufacturers know what action to take, when, where, and how.

At last, it leads to measurable business outcomes, like:

1. Lower downtime
2. Higher output
3. Sturdier compliance
4. Quicker time-to-insight
5. Diminished rework and wastage
6. Decreased costs

Imagine a high-volume soap manufacturer. By implementing Microsoft Fabric for Manufacturing, it manages the following:

1. OneLake stores all data from IT and OT systems and analyzes it further.
2. Data Factory automates the processes of temperature setting, machine speed, raw material dosage, quality checks, and reports.
3. Data engineering cleanses data, creates models, and prepares for further processing.
4. Data science and ML feature result in prediction and optimization.
5. BI capabilities create visualizations, reports, and dashboards.
6. Real-time analytics detects defects, sends real-time signals, and alerts factory supervisors.
7. The Copilot feature uses all data for quick and accurate query responses.

Thus, you can compare data across multiple plants to introduce standardization that increases productivity. The resulting synchronized workflows, high-level analytics, and real-time visibility of operations help you achieve accuracy and speed in your production.

Conclusion

Manufacturers dealing in high-volume production are sitting on a big platform of siloed and unanalyzed data from IT and OT systems. Such fractured data, misaligned assessments, and opposing priorities are causing delays and inaccuracies, devaluing your manufacturing processes. Ultimately, your potential for transformation and innovation remains untapped.

Microsoft Fabric for Manufacturing converges data from these IT and OT systems. Its features of analytical intelligence, decision-making capabilities, and enterprise-wide visibility solve your problem. It unifies the data from and technology of IT and OT systems to improve the value chain and decision-making. It lets you move from a chaotic data environment to a fundamentally strong working atmosphere that ensures resilience, efficiency, and security.

About Intech Systems

Your Trusted Microsoft-certified partner, Intech Systems, pushes your business forward with Microsoft solution implementation. We understand your pain points and identify the perfect solution to fit your needs and goals. Not only do we help you become more productive and efficient, but we also enable your digital transformation and goal realization.

FAQs

With Microsoft Fabric implementation services, we revolutionize your manufacturing processes and workflows for higher output. Fabric simplifies data analysis, generates more insights, and enables accurate decisions with OT and IT integration. The solution is not only a technological change but a plethora of new capabilities that drive your business goals.