Intro: Harnessing IoT in the Enterprise
GE Digital said its Predix Asset Performance Management software will be used to power its monitoring and diagnostic center, which tracks the health of more than 600 power plants around the world.
The broad rollout of GE's Asset Performance Management (APM) software serves a bevy of purposes:
Scott Bolick, GE Power's head of software strategy and product management, said the APM deployment will happen in the fourth quarter. "This will be the largest APM deployment and largest industrial IoT use case," said Bolick.
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GE Power's efforts come at an interesting time for the company. As a new CEO -- John Flannery -- takes the helm, analysts have questioned whether GE should spin off its digital unit and look for ways to cut costs. Flannery has said GE is committed to its digital efforts.
GE Power's Atlanta monitoring and diagnostic center is already used by customers, who tap into GE's monitoring services and data science to spot equipment issues and act. The center receives more than 200 billion data notifications from one million sensors in the field across 5,000 power plant assets globally.
The returns on industrial Internet of things as well as IoT in general is predictive maintenance and eliminating downtime. By scaling, GE Digital into markets such as Africa, the company can aggregate emerging market information.
GE Digital is also launching Monitoring and Diagnostics as a service. The service will enable customers to implement APM across power assets and then aggregate data. The customer will own the data, but can share for benchmark data from GE Power. "The customers own their data. If there is an outcome guarantee, we get the data to provide that service," explained Bolick. "If APM is deployed by itself, the customer decides whether to share the data."