GE today announced it is on track to deliver over $1 billion in incremental revenue this year from more than 40 Industrial Internet offerings, with $1.3 billion in orders, helping customers improve asset performance management (APM) and business operations across the company. In addition, Predix, GE’s software platform that powers the Industrial Internet, will be made available to any company in 2015, allowing them to create and deploy their own customized industry apps at speed and scale to better manage the performance of their assets.
“The tools are in place to realize the potential of the Industrial Internet to increase productivity for our customers and for GE,” said Jeff Immelt, Chairman & CEO of GE. "The more we can connect, monitor, and manage the world’s machines, the more insight and visibility we can give our customers to reduce unplanned downtime and increase predictability. By opening up Predix to the world, companies of any size and in any industry can benefit from the investments GE has made by eliminating the barrier to entry.”
GE’s new APM solutions, launched today, focus on power optimization, providing customers 24x7 access to a remote monitoring and diagnostics platform, predictive maintenance insight, and incremental power when needed. Distributed Power’s current suite of data-driven solutions - On Site Power Visibility and On Site Power Performance - help to optimize the performance of GE’s aeroderivative gas turbines, reduce life-cycle costs, improve uptime, increase efficiency, and drive profitability.
The Predictable Asset Toolbox for Industry: Predix + Predictivity + APM
GE currently monitors and analyzes 50 million data elements from 10 million sensors on $1 trillion of managed assets daily to move customers toward zero unplanned downtime. Powered by Predix, APM enables customers to put streams of data to work to proactively make the right decisions at the right time to keep assets safe, help them run better, consume less fuel, receive service more efficiently, and minimize unplanned downtime.
Kristian Steenstrup of Gartner said, “Increased usage of APM solutions and services will help asset owners and operators reduce maintenance costs and operational risk while boosting reliability. The ultimate goal for any organization is the ‘perfectly predictable asset.’ For immature organizations, this might appear to be an unachievable goal. However, the pursuit is worthwhile, given the many benefits that accrue from getting closer to it. APM will be at the center of efforts to get there."
GE will leverage its high-margin services backlog of more than $180 billion to develop new APM technologies, growing its dollars of revenue per installed base 3-to-5 percent annually. Reinforcing the importance of this opportunity, Immelt said: “The Industrial Internet is a win-win for GE and our customers. Our offerings will increase GE’s services margins and boost organic industrial growth, with the potential to drive as much as $20 billion in annual savings across our industries.”
For example, AirAsia is on track to save $10 million in fuel costs in 2014 by using Flight Efficiency Services. The solution enables airlines to optimize traffic flow aircraft sequence management, flight path design, and more by revealing patterns and transforming data into actionable insights. AirAsia fuel savings alone are expected to grow to $30 million by 2017.
Jonathan Sanjay, Regional Fuel Efficiency Manager at Air Asia, said, “If you generate a small savings on each flight it translates to big savings at the end of the year. Even a one percent savings can translate into millions of dollars.”
In addition, E.ON has achieved up to 4 percent more power output from 283 of its wind turbines enrolled in GE’s Wind PowerUpTM, a customized software-enabled platform that increases a wind farm’s output by up to 5 percent, taking into account environmental and site conditions. This increased output results in an additional 40 gigawatt hours of annual energy production, the equivalent energy to power approximately 4,000 American homes for a year.
“E.ON is always innovating, and we are happy that GE’s PowerUp technology has made some of our best wind farms even better,” said Patrick Woodson, chairman, E.ON North America. “Advancements in wind energy technology, like PowerUp services, will continue to make renewable energy even more competitive in the energy market.”
To help businesses accelerate the adoption of Industrial Internet solutions, GE also announced a new APM tool that helps customers assess their current operations and identify the assets and processes that would benefit the most from increased connectivity, data analysis, and optimization. This initial assessment is the first step in realizing bottom line savings and minimizing unplanned downtime.
Designing Apps for Industry that Matter: Predix App Factory
To further the value of APM, GE today launched the Predix App Factory, an advanced methodology for rapidly prototyping, validating, and developing Industrial Internet applications that shortens typical development cycles from months to weeks. GE pioneered this collaborative approach with customers to drive innovation at scale, bringing together experts from user experience and design, data science, machine connectivity, and agile software development.
GE is using the App Factory process at its state-of-the-art Design Center in San Ramon, California to develop new solutions that lead to better customer outcomes such as reduced resource consumption, improved operational efficiency, and lower risk. For example, GE Aviation created an industry app allowing airline and plane operators to blend current information with advanced analytics to actively monitor more than 30,000 jet engines for real-time detection and response to issues.
The Security Standard to Protect Critical Infrastructure: Wurldtech
Securing critical infrastructure is vital to the Industrial Internet, but it holds a unique set of complexities that are different from protecting a traditional IT environment. GE is focused on safeguarding operations technology and improving the reliability of the Industrial Internet for customers and industries. To do this, GE acquired Wurldtech earlier this year to leverage its Achilles industrial security products and services to certify GE and non-GE products and customer environments. GE plans to use Achilles as a standard for securing all of its technology for delivering security enhancements through Predix and GE Products.
In addition, Wurldtech released a firewall, currently entering beta, optimized for industrial infrastructure and operations technology environments. Wurldtech’s Achilles Industrial Next Gen Firewall (NGFW) provides advanced threat detection by monitoring network traffic and blocking unexpected and malicious activity. To simplify administration, NGFW’s graphical user interface is designed for easy and efficient management of security policies and protection profiles.
Bill Ruh, Vice President, GE Software, said, “Protecting sensor networks and critical infrastructure is paramount to the reliability and safety of industrial operations as more machines and systems are brought online and connected to people at work. At GE, we are well positioned to help respond to this dynamic by bringing together three elements that include our industrial big data platform, an ecosystem of partners, and vigorous cyber security management through the acquisition of Wurldtech. All of these important elements will require continued progress across innovation to transform not just the industrial world, but the global economy as organizations realize the benefits of the Industrial Internet.”
Connecting The World’s Assets And People: New Partnerships to expand the Industrial Internet
Today, every GE machine is Predix-ready, but the Industrial Internet extends beyond just GE assets and customers. To expand the Industrial Internet ecosystem, GE has launched new and expanded alliances, and technology innovations to make it possible for operators to collect more data, generate more insights from a growing number of “Predix-ready” machines and devices connected to the Industrial Internet.
Predix-ready Edge Devices
GE and Cisco are working to integrate Predix software on Cisco networking products to enable the collection and analysis of asset performance and operational data anywhere in the network. One of the first of these devices is a Predix-ready Cisco router in a ruggedized form-factor for harsh environments such as oil and gas facilities.
GE and Intel have teamed to develop a reference architecture for edge devices that integrates Intel processors and software with Predix software to make it possible to embed intelligence and adaptability in virtually any asset. The new design will be made available to gateway manufacturers to make the exploding number of connected devices and sensor networks Predix-ready.
The first wave of new Predix-ready devices at the edge of the network will go online early next year.
Global Network Connectivity
GE also announced new global alliances with Softbank, Verizon, and Vodafone to provide a wide range of wireless connectivity solutions optimized for Industrial Internet solutions. In addition, GE continues to fuel innovation with AT&T by connecting its machines and assets such as locomotives, fleet, and aircraft engines through the AT&T global network and highly secure cloud. Together, these relationships enable GE to provide its industrial customers with advanced connectivity services in virtually any geography.
