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June 13, 2017

GE taps cloud analytics and robotics to fuel industrial transformation

GE develops new advanced solutions to give businesses the opportunity to kick start industrial transformation using analytics & robotics.

By Hannah Williams

GE is tackling industrial assets, environments and operations with a trio of new solutions designed to accelerate digital industrial transformation.

Tapping into new buy ServiceMax and leveraging the power of Predix, GE is looking to take the transformation journey outside of the factory walls with applications, edge-to-cloud analytics and robotics.

As many companies today lack the ability to combine insights from data with actions in real time when managing serving assets, unplanned downtime may occur.

According to GE, in order to remove downtime and also reduce costs, industries should shift from a reactive service model to a predictive model, helping companies identify any issues and have the right tools to act on them quickly.

In light of this GE Digital has developed an integrated solution with ServiceMax to deliver an industrial service model for organisations.

The integration sees ServiceMax’s cloud-based field service management (FSM) solution combined with GE Digital’s Asset Perfromance Management portfolio.

Read more: ServiceMax CEO: Industrial Internet of Things & why GE went for field service

This collaboration comes after GE Digital completed the acquisition of ServiceMax for $915 million in January 2017, to deliver service transformation capabilities for its customers.

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Bill Ruh, CEO, GE Digital said: “The Industrial Internet is enabling companies to take advantage of possibilities that previously seemed out of reach. But in many ways, we are still in the early stages of his transformation journey as companies seek to move from gaining insight to taking action and as automation gives way to autonomous systems.”

GE DigitalGE Digital’s APM and ServiceMax’s offerings are expected to enable businesses to manage the asset lifecycle and also increase productivity.

In an interview with CBR, Dave Yarnold, CEO of ServiceMax revealed that using ServiceMax’s solution has previously boosted an increase in uptime for businesses of up to $260,000 during 2014 to 2016.

GE Digital’s APM and FSM solutions are designed to collect and analyse service data to help industrial companies move from the traditional asset monitoring to advanced predictive maintenance and APM.

The second release of the trio sees GE’s launch of its new Avitas Systems Company to use predictive data analytics, robotics and artificial intelligence to deliver inspection services to oil and gas, transportation and energy industries.

By reducing high-risk tasks using robotics, Avitas Systems can make inspection processes safer and more efficient by using data automation to decrease costs by up to 25 percent, according to GE.

Alex Tepper, MD, Avitas Systems said: “We deploy state-of-the-art robotics and cloud-based technology to give customers the customised service and insights-based data they need to advance from reactive repair- no matter where their assets are located.”

The last product announced by GE at Minds + Machines Europe are a combination of industrial applications, solutions and partnerships that are to help businesses make use of the Industrial Internet while developing a digitally industrial company.

The solutions are powered by Predix tools, which are used to gather data about machines while creating connection to them at the edge.

Predix is a platform designed for the industrial internet, to enable businesses to access industrial-scale analytics for asset performance management.

Its GE Power arm revealed a Digital Utility suite, which includes Predix-based applications to connect real-time machine data with a utility’s profitability.

The Digital Utility Suite is packed with updates to GE Power’s Operations Optimisation software, which together with closed-loop analytics are used to improve generation efficiency for entire fleets.

GE’s alliance partner PwC, also offers is Predix-powered commercial operations solution for utility companies to give executives the ability to identify any leakages that may occur. It analyses plant performance data from GEs Operations Optimisation application and commercial data from dispatch and market facing system. The solution is expected to launch in summer 2017.

GE also partnered with EY to deliver an energy management solution, from EY. The solution is Predix-powered to help OEM’s transform how energy consumption is managed, delivering analytics for real-time decision making with the data and insights provided automatically.

The company has again made use of Predix’s services to deliver wind farm hardware and software solutions using data analytics to increase operations. For manufacturing services, the Predix edge technology is delivered to allow customers to monitor and collect data from their machines.

Jeff Immelt, CEO and Chairman, GE said: “Europe can lead the digital industrial era. Investment in technology, such as automation, advanced manufacturing and artificial intelligence- along with new skills- can transform industry and drive productivity. GE has long been committed to Europe and we are invested in its future.”

Following this news, it has also been reported that the CEO Jeff Immelt has now resigned after 16 years at the position. The company has confirmed that John Flannery, the current president and CEO of GE’s health-care unit John Flannery will take up the position in August.

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