Internet of Things and GE's "brilliant" machines.

Jack Welch: GE will be around another 100 years 

For General Electric (GE),   the Industrial Internet is a 'disruptive business model'. General Electric estimates that the amount the Industrial Internet could add to global GDP over the next 20 years is $ 15 trillion and that there would be about 50 billion interconnected devices by 2020. By capturing the space offered by the Internet of Things,

GE is trying to meet the customer requirements of swift and instant gratification. GE is using the technological surf of the IoT to ride the short term and to transform it to a long term wave to enhance the return on investment. It hopes to make conversations between different IT systems and have a  unified set of meaningful metrics. GE focuses on knitting together machines  on  a common data platform. This should optimize industrial performance, enhance values to the global supply chain, and add to ROI.  

 

GE is keen to use the data generated and make it more effective from an industrial angle through data sharing. GE seeks to make manufacturing collaborative, decentralized, and efficient. Devices and people across the globe will collaborate on production in real-time. There will be a smart and efficient supply chain that is reliable and cost economic. Predictive analytics will fuse "big iron" with "big data". [1]

 GE is building partnerships with  its Predix platform. This  IoT `operating system’ originally developed for GE's own use, is being utilised to help customer projects. It is proposed to make it available  to a growing number of technology partners.

GE is positioning itself and is managing for results.   IoT's "power of one percent". The company believes that using sensors and software to make current industrial procedures and equipment just 1% more efficient will result in billions of saving for its customers.

Savings at 1 % enhanced efficiency

Industry	Amount Saved in $ billion over 15 years
Oil & Gas	90
Health care	63
Aviation	30

 Source: GE

The company now has more than 10 million sensors in the equipment it sells.  The software analytics side of its business is expected to generate more than $1 billion in revenue. (GE's total revenue in 2013 was $146 billion). As the  Predix software will be available to seekers, GE's IoT revenue will increase on volume basis.[2]

 References

1.      http://www.ge.com/stories/industrial-internet

2.      http://www.fastcompany.com/3031272/can-jeff-immelt-really-make-the-world-1-better#9

3.      http://diginomica.com/2015/03/11/general-electric-pursues-outcome-internet-things/

4.      http://www.fool.com/investing/general/2014/11/05/general-electric-vs-cisco-which-is-the-better-inte.aspx

5.      http://www.zdnet.com/article/ge-forges-internet-of-things-alliances-with-verizon-cisco-intel/

6.      http://www.accenture.com/sitecollectiondocuments/pdf/accenture-industrial-internet-changing-competitive-landscape-industries.pdf

7.      http://bits.blogs.nytimes.com/2014/10/09/ge-opens-its-big-data-platform/?_r=0

8.      http://www.technologyreview.com/news/527381/ges-1-billion-software-bet/

9.      http://ahmedbanafa.blogspot.in/2015/04/the-industrial-internet-of-things-iiot.html

Note : This script is based on readings of the author during his on line research on the Internet of Things. The author can be contacted at jaynayar@gmail.com 

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[1] A GE locomotive is made up of about 200,000 parts,  contain 6.7 miles of wiring and 250 sensors that put out 9 million data points every hour.  These will increase rendering predictive models of both performance and non performance possible.  A single blade in a gas turbine, if you put a lot of sensors on it, can generate 500 gigabytes of data each day; every pair of GEnx engines,   installed on Boeing's  787 Dream liner can  generate a terabyte of information every day.  

These devices wouldn't just let you know they were going to break down. They would actually repair themselves.

[2] GE currently monitors and analyzes 50 million data points from 10 million sensors on $1 trillion of managed assets daily. GE said it will open up the Predix platform to users and developers in 2015. The platform allows for customized industry apps, asset tracking and management and firewalls to protect infrastructure.