What challenges did Pact Group face before AI implementation?

Lacked integrated operational insight and predictive maintenance across thousands of manufacturing machines. Needed to transition from legacy, fragmented systems to a scalable, digital-first foundation. Manual data preparation and reporting hampered agility and inhibited data-driven decision making. Back-office and IT support interactions were time-consuming and inconsistent. Safety and compliance monitoring relied on manual workflows, risking efficiency and quality.

What was the impact of the AI solution?

Operational efficiency gains as people are freed from manual reporting tasks. Faster time-to-value with new technology rollouts due to Azure ecosystem.

Source

MicrosoftExpandedProductionEvidence: Medium65/100

Pact Group advances packaging operations with Industry 4.0 automation

Use case typeIT operationsUpdated Jun 13, 2026

Pact Group, a major packaging provider in Australasia, sought digital transformation to drive growth and efficiency. To support its Industry 4.0 ambitions, the company migrated its core SAP platform and over 90% of its workloads to Microsoft Azure, establishing a digital foundation for innovation. Azure provides the backbone for integrations spanning AI, ML, IoT, and enterprise analytics. Pact Group implemented IoT to begin aggregating machine data, enhancing predictive maintenance capabilities and operational insights. Power BI was deployed company-wide to deliver a single source of truth, transforming how employees interact with data and boosting decision-making. The enterprise is piloting bots via Microsoft Bot Framework to automate IT and back-office support, aiming to automate up to 40% of interactions with AI-driven consistency. Safety innovations include intelligent kiosks leveraging visual recognition services for real-time monitoring and compliance. As a result, business processes are faster, safer, and more data-driven, pushing Pact Group to the forefront of digitally enabled manufacturing.

AI-generated summary. Generated from indexed evidence or computed site data. Underlying records pass applicable deterministic checks; verify important details with source links where available. How content is created.

Organization: Pact Group
Industry: Manufacturing
Location: Australia
Published: November 2017

Why do we believe this?Outcome claims, sources, and evidence checks

Normalized claim

Quantified impact: 40%

news.microsoft.comNov 13, 2017News articleInferred claimMedium evidence strength

Pilots anticipate automating up to 40% of back-office interactions and improving safety compliance.

Why do we believe this deployment?Customer identity, provider attribution, maturity, and source checks

Customer: Pact Group
Provider: Microsoft
Maturity: Production
Linked source: news.microsoft.com

Pact Group implemented IoT to begin aggregating machine data, enhancing predictive maintenance capabilities and operational insights

Customer identity supportedSource describes one deploymentMaturity supported

Primary read

Use case focus

Showing 3 of 4

1Predictive Maintenance for Manufacturing Equipment
2IoT-enabled Real-time Operational Insight
3Automated Back-office and IT Support via Chatbots

Lacked integrated operational insight and predictive maintenance across thousands of manufacturing machines.
Needed to transition from legacy, fragmented systems to a scalable, digital-first foundation.
Manual data preparation and reporting hampered agility and inhibited data-driven decision making.
Back-office and IT support interactions were time-consuming and inconsistent.
Safety and compliance monitoring relied on manual workflows, risking efficiency and quality.

Migrated SAP platform and workloads to Microsoft Azure for a unified cloud infrastructure.
Implemented Azure IoT to collect real-time and historical machine data, enabling predictive analytics.
Deployed Power BI company-wide for a single source of analytics truth.
Piloted Microsoft Bot Framework-based chatbots to automate IT and business processes and support.
Experimented with safety kiosks using AI-driven visual recognition for workplace monitoring and compliance.

Technologies

Azure Azure AI Azure ML Power BI Microsoft Bot Framework Azure IoT

Operational efficiency gains as people are freed from manual reporting tasks.
Faster time-to-value with new technology rollouts due to Azure ecosystem.

Architecture

Pact Group migrated its core SAP platform and business workloads to Microsoft Azure. Azure provides a scalable foundation for digital transformation, supporting integrated AI, ML, IoT, and automation initiatives. IoT sensors collect machine data, which is aggregated and used by predictive analytics systems. Power BI surfaces insights from this data as the single source of truth across the organization. Microsoft Bot Framework underpins bots that automate IT and support processes. Visual recognition is employed in safety kiosks, combining video streams with AI for compliance monitoring.

Sources & evidence1

Evidence: Medium65/100Evidence strength