GE unveils new data tools
• Digitising operations will be worth $200bn by 2020
General Electric is unveiling software for boosting its machines’ productivity and streamlining repairs, alongside deals with Danish shipping line Maersk and French energy producer Dalkia.
General Electric (GE) is unveiling software for boosting its machines’ productivity and streamlining repairs, alongside deals with Danish shipping line Maersk and French energy producer Dalkia.
GE announced new software for power plants, drilling platforms and wind farms at an event in Berlin on Tuesday.
The showcase for GE’s IT know-how comes a day after the company said longtime CEO Jeffrey Immelt would step down on August 1 in favour of healthcare chief John Flannery, after a transition to “a high-tech industrial company” that was increasingly selling software in addition to heavy gear.
Immelt, CEO since 2001, built up GE’s capabilities in outfitting its turbines, jet engines, wind farms and medical equipment with data-collecting sensors and a software platform called Predix to analyse it all.
The software push is part of a broad movement by industrial producers to create factories, energy plants and vehicles that can sense their own performance and surroundings, cut costs or create new businesses based on that data.
Competitors including Germany’s Siemens, Switzerland’s ABB and France’s Schneider Electric, have also been adding software and data-analysis capabilities to their machinery. Technology companies, such as IBM, Google, Microsoft and Amazon are also applying their software to manufacturing and transportation applications, opening new rivalries.
GE has about 20,000 software engineers working on its software in the energy, aviation, healthcare equipment and oil and gas industries.
Instead of simply trying to sell service contracts with an offshore wind turbine, for example, GE could now offer customers a digital model of the turbines it sold, so their buyers could manage fleets based on location, performance and the weather, Mark Hutchinson, GE’s CEO for Europe, said.
Bill Ruh, the CEO of GE Digital, the company’s software and industrial internet division, said digitising industrial operations would constitute a $200bn market by 2020. “As the price of their product declines, companies are looking for efficiency,” he said.
GE did not plan to scale back its software push under its new CEO, vice-chairwoman Beth Comstock said in Berlin.
“Investors have been patient,” she said.
“They’ve been with us the last six years as we’ve been making investments. I don’t know how you don’t go digital as an industrial company.
“John Flannery knows this first-hand. He’s very aware of what’s happening in other businesses. He’s not in isolation.”
GE plans to introduce in 2017 a combination of its software tools for monitoring machines’ performance with the ServiceMax field service software it acquired. GE Ventures, the company’s investment and intellectual property licensing arm, is launching a company called Avitas Systems to combine GE’s Predix platform with data analysis, robotics and AI technology for inspecting machines in the drilling, energy and transportation industries.
Maersk Drilling and GE have started a year-long pilot to increase a drilling platform’s productivity by monitoring machinery on board and predicting its maintenance schedule. GE will also work with Dalkia to predict gas engine repair schedules.
GE is estimating $1bn in Predix orders in 2017 and Ruh said that he was seeing more “intensity of demand” in Europe.
GE HAS ABOUT 20,000 SOFTWARE ENGINEERS WORKING ON ITS SOFTWARE IN ENERGY, AVIATION AND HEALTHCARE