GE Digital Updates Its Digital Plant Software Portfolio

GE Digital unveiled the latest updates to its digital plant software portfolio: Proficy Plant Applications, Proficy Operations Hub, Proficy Historian, and Proficy CSense.  This software helps to accelerate digitization and digitalization for industrial organizations by supporting the digital worker as part of infrastructure modernization, enterprise visibility and scalability, and continuous improvement of operations.

Key developments

Proficy Plant Applications is a Manufacturing Execution System (MES) that spans process, discrete, and mixed manufacturing environments, allowing manufacturers to more efficiently deploy one MES across their enterprise rather than multiple, disparate solutions, which helps for reducing costs and time while increasing consistency and collaboration.  Based on over 25 years of development, this MES helps to maximize overall equipment effectiveness (OEE), improve production scheduling, and increase product quality by leveraging real-time production data.

New features in Version 8.1 include:

• Core process, discrete, and mixed manufacturing enhancements, such as loT-based discrete work order execution, non-conformance tracking, and in-process work order editor
• Instantaneous upgrades with Docker containerization technology
• Expanded native HTML5 content to include Production Schedule for executing process orders and Waste Management

Proficy Operations Hub, a centralized environment for building industrial applications for mobile and Web-based intelligence, allows organizations to gain a greater foundation for insights into operations and productivity, supporting Lean and other continuous improvement initiatives.  New features include:

• Real-time workflow task lists on assets with context and scalability, performance and security enhancements
• Faster, low code / no code implementation and quicker time to value
• Advanced Historian Trend Analysis app for data analysis in asset model context
• Seamless integration of Proficy Plant Applications content
• Support for English, Chinese, Japanese, Korean, Spanish, German, Russian and Czech

Proficy Historian provides industrial time-series and Alarm & Events data collection for on-premise and cloud-based storage and analysis. Updates in the new version 8.1 include Remote Collector Management for large, enterprise-distributed system management and reduced costs with Historian ETL (Extract, Transfer, Load) for more sophisticated file-oriented data transmission for Enterprise Historian. Additionally, GE Digital released Proficy Historian for Linux Version 2.3 for improved data collection at edge devices, delivering distributed data management to support IoT.

Proficy CSense helps to improve asset and process performance by providing five analytics capabilities in one closed-loop software solution: analysis, monitoring, prediction, simulation, and optimization and control of setpoints. Used globally, this industrial analytics software turns raw data into realtime value with a Process Digital Twin. Proficy CSense provides AI and machine learning to enable process engineers to combine data across industrial data sources and more rapidly identify problems, discover root causes, predict future performance, and automate actions to continuously improve quality, utilization, productivity, and delivery. The new version 7.0 allows engineers to analyze larger datasets with increased memory limitations, and features improved connectivity, model predictive control, interoperability, and security.

Craig Resnick, ARC Advisory Group, commented, “The COVID-19 pandemic greatly accelerated the need for solutions that support the new normal, as social distancing, remote operations, and supply chain issues have completely upended plants and factories.  This requires deploying MES, HMI/SCADA, historian, and analytics solutions capable of visualizing operations, analyzing data, and optimizing production, then providing that smart information in real time to the appropriate personnel regardless of their location so they can respond quickly and correctly without any detriment to performance.

“GE Digital’s software upgrades address these new normal requirements directly and will help to further enable organizations to deploy their new digital workforce.  Also, providing low code/no code technology for building Digital Plant Software Portfolio applications will not only speed up implementation, but enable this new digital workforce, either located on-site or remote, to rapidly come up to speed and begin to deliver tremendous value to the organization right away.”