Omron and Cognizant want to ‘re-invent’ manufacturing with $345m tie-up
11 April 2025 
Omron has formed a strategic partnership with the manufacturing IT giant Cognizant to integrate OT (operational technology) and IT for manufacturing customers worldwide. They plan to combine combines Omron’s portfolio of more than 200,000 OT products – including controllers, servomotors, sensors, safety equipment and robots – with Cognizant’s IT capabilities, including cloud, AI, IoT, and digital twin technologies. They believe that this combination will deliver “a unique, one-stop solution for digital transformation”.
Together, the companies plan to offer consultancy, on-site implementation, operation and maintenance services. The sectors they are targeting include industrial manufacturing, automotive, semiconductors, electronics, life sciences and consumer goods.
Products from Omron’s Industrial Automation Business (IAB) will gather field data for Cognizant’s Asset Performance Excellence (APEx) platform and its OnePlant Industry 4.0/5.0 maturity assessment tool. This data, combined with management information, will help to analyse manufacturing IT issues and prioritise improvements.
Announcing the tie-up recently in Germany, Omron Corporation’s president CEO, Junta Tsujinaga, predicted that the combined business could be worth 50 billion yen ($345m) within five years. He also believes that Cognizant’s strength in Europe will help Omron to expand in the region. Omron currently employs around 2,000 people in 28 European countries.
Tsujinaga identified several issues that he believes are holding back the integration of OT and IT, with the result that Industry 4.0 has not achieved its full potential yet. These challenges include the “walls” between manufacturing and IT that hinder collaboration between these two worlds, problems with digitalising old machinery, and the incompatible data formats used by different machines.
He said that Cognizant’s strengths in areas such as consulting, manufacturing-focused IT, and using AI for management, complement Omron’s strengths in collecting and delivering data from shopfloor devices. Together, they hope to offer a platform “that controls everything” and frees OT from existing bottlenecks.
This “virtual control platform” (VCP), operating on the edge, will integrate multiple industrial PCs on industrial sites and link Omron’s shopfloor technologies to Cognizant IT systems. It will deliver precision synchronisation and “real-time orchestration” of shopfloor activities.
“Omron is the only manufacturer of control equipment in the world that owns all the equipment used in the production line,” Tsujinaga pointed out. “Cognizant, on the other hand, is one of the world’s leading global IT services companies supporting the digital transformation of a wide range of industries with advanced digital technologies such as AI, IoT, and cloud.
“Through this partnership, we will promote the integration of IT and OT to solve urgent issues faced by manufacturing sites, such as significantly improving productivity, reducing operational losses, and speeding up management decisions. The two companies will work together to promote sustainable cutting-edge manufacturing of the future.”
Cognizant CEO, Ravi Kumar S, says that the partnership wants to re-invent manufacturing. He adds that “clients are looking for a strategic partner with deep industry and domain expertise, end-to-end capabilities and the ability to manage complex technologies at various layers of digital factory. We are excited to partner with Omron in taking integrated value propositions and capabilities to transform manufacturing for our clients globally.
“Omron’s expertise in OT data and systems, combined with Cognizant’s digital manufacturing and IT/OT integration capabilities, will enable manufacturers to make quicker, more reliable decisions using real-time data,” Kumar predicted. “Together, we are committed to advancing manufacturing by leveraging emerging technologies and integrating IT and OT systems to realise a state of manufacturing in the future that is connected, intelligent, autonomous, sustainable and resilient.”
Omron, founded in 1933, currently employs around 28,000 people worldwide and had sales worth ¥819bn (€5bn) in the year ended March 2024. Automation accounts for almost half (48%) of its revenues, and it is also active in other areas including healthcare equipment, and industrial devices and modules.
Cognizant employs around 336,800 people worldwide, helping customers to become data-enabled and data-driven. Its headquarters are in the US and it generated global revenues worth $19.7bn in the last financial year.
