Lexmark, a global imaging and IoT solutions leader, today announced a new partnership with HARMAN Digital Transformation Solutions, in which HARMAN as part of its IoT offerings portfolio will deploy Lexmark's IoT technology on specific projects for customers across various industries. The collaboration will marry IoT with AI to address the many challenges facing enterprises and public institutions.

Lexmark will provide its industry-leading Optra IoT technology, while HARMAN will provide domain competency along with its large network of integration expertise across platforms and industrial protocols. Lexmark and HARMAN will help clients develop new types of industrial IoT applications such as Industry 4.0, remote monitoring of manufacturing plants, medical devices and connected products.

"Our expertise with IoT for connected products and our visual AI capabilities for connected operations will provide HARMAN with rapid solution capabilities," said Vishal Gupta, senior vice president and chief technology and information officer at Lexmark. "HARMAN's significant customer network will allow us to expand our footprint and further grow Lexmark's IoT business."

One of the first offerings will be an AI-powered solution that can detect anomalies and defects in products on a manufacturing line – work that typically relies on a labor-intensive manual inspection. A similar solution used internally within Lexmark delivered a 40% improvement in inspection speed, a 99% reduction in errors, and an ROI within three months.

"With healthcare and industrial being two of our key focus areas at HARMAN Digital Transformation Solutions, along with our talented team, we have an edge above the rest in the industry. We are confident that the association will successfully deliver the best possible IoT solutions to customers," said Sanjay Bhartiya, Commercial General Manager at HARMAN Digital Transformation Solutions.

Lexmark's Optra Edge is a user-friendly platform combining edge computing hardware with a low code/no code cloud-based management portal and pre-built AI/ML applications that make it easier and faster to turn real-time data into real-time action. Optra Edge acts as a translator between devices and back-end systems and provides powerful local computation ability without the cloud.