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Whether it be through the company’s media blitz, its recent Minds & Machines event that is the cover page of the company’s website, http://www.ge.com/, or the mission of its leadership, driven by CEO Jeffrey Immelt, General Electric today has a singular focus. This focus is to use the industrial internet as a conduit to help manufacturers increase production efficiency, execution and optimization through advanced analytics. The goal is to help solve one of the biggest challenges faced by manufacturers and processors in all industries, which is to prevent or minimize unscheduled downtime. GE feels that the proof is in the results that it has experienced in its own factories, maximizing manufacturing production performance through applying advanced real-time analytics. This involves leveraging IoT to integrate and aggregate data from design to service and leveraging analytics to support decision-making to reduce unplanned downtime, maximize yield and increase equipment utilization.
GE’s tool to accomplish this is its Brilliant Manufacturing Suite, which includes an OEE performance analyzer to transform real-time machine data into actionable production efficiency metrics; a production execution supervisor to digitizes orders, process steps, instructions and documentation with information pulled directly from ERP and PLM systems; a production quality analyzer for real-time identification of quality data boundaries that catch non-conforming events; and a product genealogy manager that builds a record of personnel, equipment, raw materials, sub-assemblies and tools used to produce finished goods.
GE's industrial Brilliant Manufacturing Suite leverages GE's Predix platform for edge-to-cloud connectivity, security and manufacturing analytics. Predix capabilities are extended with a partner ecosystem that includes Cisco and PTC. Together, these solutions implement the Suite, which can be delivered through flexible deployment and software as a service delivery models.
Another GE tool to accomplish this is its predictive analytics solution, SmartSignal, which will be available as part of GE Digital's Asset Performance Management (APM) solutions on the Predix platform, the company's purpose-built cloud platform for industry. SmartSignal powered by Predix will deliver anomaly detection with early warning capabilities that is SaaS based. Condition-based maintenance is a means to cut existing operations and maintenance costs, and SmartSignal helps to leverage this on cloud and Big Data platforms.
Leverage IoT Partnerships to Help Solve Unscheduled Downtime
GE and Cisco teamed up to develop a set of best practices for deploying GE's Brilliant Manufacturing Suite within a Cisco IT environment. This reference architecture from GE and Cisco, architecting a manufacturing network for the Internet of Things, provides a blueprint for combining GE's digital industrial solutions with Cisco's networking infrastructure in order to create a digital thread that will capture machine data on the factory floor. This solution will combine GE manufacturing software that provides real-time, role-based dashboards with Cisco's networking technology. These solutions use big data, software, sensors, controllers and robotics to help increase productivity and deliver asset and operations optimization.
This go-to-market partnership builds on GE's and Cisco's strategy to connect the growing number of machines to the Industrial Internet. Last year, GE and Cisco announced they are integrating Predix software on Cisco networking products to help enable the collection and analysis of asset performance and operational data 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 PTC also teamed up to deliver a manufacturing solution that will be available within GE's Brilliant Manufacturing Suite. This new GE-branded manufacturing solution leverages the capabilities of PTC's ThingWorx Industrial Internet of Things application enablement environment. The joint solution connects disparate systems, from the factory floor to ERP. The result is an industry-hardened solution that features dashboards and data analytics integrated with GE's software capabilities on the manufacturing plant floor.
Leveraging PTC's ThingWorx technology as part of GE's Brilliant Manufacturing Suite provides manufacturing optimization capabilities coupled with role-based manufacturing dashboards with real-time manufacturing KPIs; standardized KPI models for plants connecting to heterogeneous system landscapes; and collaboration, alerts, notifications and access to actionable data. GE and PTC will also work together to certify ThingWorx for the Predix ecosystem.
GE and PTC will align their respective global manufacturing sales and marketing teams to jointly pursue opportunities. The GE-PTC solution will be implemented within GE's internal manufacturing plants as part of its Brilliant Factory initiative.
To Accomplish This Requires a Top to Bottom Commitment
Having a platform, products, and partnerships are certainly all key to being able to deploy IoT to help solve the problem of unscheduled downtime, but if the company, from top to bottom, is not all on the same page, the odds of doing this successfully are slim to none. GE is on a mission to prove it can be successful in deploying IoT to help solve the problem of unscheduled downtime, and has the commitment from the CEO on down driving the entire business towards that goal. Its Minds & Machine event had 1600 attendees and had to turn away 500 persons due to the capacity of the facility in which it was held. Jeff Immelt is changing the portfolio of GE to accomplish this, divesting 60 percent of the company he took over in 2001 and through strategic acquisitions and organic growth, has reinvented GE as almost solely an industrial company. GE has developed these IoT-based solutions, the Predix platform, its Brilliant Manufacturing Suite, and partnerships with Cisco and PTC to carry out its mission. The company has re-invented many of its own factories with these solutions, and has seen the impact on its own bottom line results. Now, ARC will closely follow GE’s journey of demonstrating and deploying these solutions at other manufacturers, with what should result in a number of success stories of minimizing or eliminating unscheduled downtime in the future.
GE’s tool to accomplish this is its Brilliant Manufacturing Suite, which includes an OEE performance analyzer to transform real-time machine data into actionable production efficiency metrics; a production execution supervisor to digitizes orders, process steps, instructions and documentation with information pulled directly from ERP and PLM systems; a production quality analyzer for real-time identification of quality data boundaries that catch non-conforming events; and a product genealogy manager that builds a record of personnel, equipment, raw materials, sub-assemblies and tools used to produce finished goods.
GE's industrial Brilliant Manufacturing Suite leverages GE's Predix platform for edge-to-cloud connectivity, security and manufacturing analytics. Predix capabilities are extended with a partner ecosystem that includes Cisco and PTC. Together, these solutions implement the Suite, which can be delivered through flexible deployment and software as a service delivery models.
Another GE tool to accomplish this is its predictive analytics solution, SmartSignal, which will be available as part of GE Digital's Asset Performance Management (APM) solutions on the Predix platform, the company's purpose-built cloud platform for industry. SmartSignal powered by Predix will deliver anomaly detection with early warning capabilities that is SaaS based. Condition-based maintenance is a means to cut existing operations and maintenance costs, and SmartSignal helps to leverage this on cloud and Big Data platforms.
Leverage IoT Partnerships to Help Solve Unscheduled Downtime
GE and Cisco teamed up to develop a set of best practices for deploying GE's Brilliant Manufacturing Suite within a Cisco IT environment. This reference architecture from GE and Cisco, architecting a manufacturing network for the Internet of Things, provides a blueprint for combining GE's digital industrial solutions with Cisco's networking infrastructure in order to create a digital thread that will capture machine data on the factory floor. This solution will combine GE manufacturing software that provides real-time, role-based dashboards with Cisco's networking technology. These solutions use big data, software, sensors, controllers and robotics to help increase productivity and deliver asset and operations optimization.
This go-to-market partnership builds on GE's and Cisco's strategy to connect the growing number of machines to the Industrial Internet. Last year, GE and Cisco announced they are integrating Predix software on Cisco networking products to help enable the collection and analysis of asset performance and operational data 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 PTC also teamed up to deliver a manufacturing solution that will be available within GE's Brilliant Manufacturing Suite. This new GE-branded manufacturing solution leverages the capabilities of PTC's ThingWorx Industrial Internet of Things application enablement environment. The joint solution connects disparate systems, from the factory floor to ERP. The result is an industry-hardened solution that features dashboards and data analytics integrated with GE's software capabilities on the manufacturing plant floor.
Leveraging PTC's ThingWorx technology as part of GE's Brilliant Manufacturing Suite provides manufacturing optimization capabilities coupled with role-based manufacturing dashboards with real-time manufacturing KPIs; standardized KPI models for plants connecting to heterogeneous system landscapes; and collaboration, alerts, notifications and access to actionable data. GE and PTC will also work together to certify ThingWorx for the Predix ecosystem.
GE and PTC will align their respective global manufacturing sales and marketing teams to jointly pursue opportunities. The GE-PTC solution will be implemented within GE's internal manufacturing plants as part of its Brilliant Factory initiative.
To Accomplish This Requires a Top to Bottom Commitment
Having a platform, products, and partnerships are certainly all key to being able to deploy IoT to help solve the problem of unscheduled downtime, but if the company, from top to bottom, is not all on the same page, the odds of doing this successfully are slim to none. GE is on a mission to prove it can be successful in deploying IoT to help solve the problem of unscheduled downtime, and has the commitment from the CEO on down driving the entire business towards that goal. Its Minds & Machine event had 1600 attendees and had to turn away 500 persons due to the capacity of the facility in which it was held. Jeff Immelt is changing the portfolio of GE to accomplish this, divesting 60 percent of the company he took over in 2001 and through strategic acquisitions and organic growth, has reinvented GE as almost solely an industrial company. GE has developed these IoT-based solutions, the Predix platform, its Brilliant Manufacturing Suite, and partnerships with Cisco and PTC to carry out its mission. The company has re-invented many of its own factories with these solutions, and has seen the impact on its own bottom line results. Now, ARC will closely follow GE’s journey of demonstrating and deploying these solutions at other manufacturers, with what should result in a number of success stories of minimizing or eliminating unscheduled downtime in the future.