Why GE Digital Believes All Machines Should Have A ‘Digital Twin’

Q: True or false: Every customer of GED’s now requires a customized solution.

A: Today I’d say that’s true, and I think the reason why is because it’s all being invented as you go along. You can’t underestimate the complexities of the processes that industrial firms deal with.

There’s a big difference between, say, Schindler Elevator as a customer and another company. At the trivial IoT level, it all sounds the same: connect machines, add in analytics, get results.

But running it and getting value out of an elevator operation and doing it for DB Cargo, a big German transportation company–they’re doing the same thing, connecting machines, doing analytics–but those processes are very different. The value is in the custom analytics that take the domain knowledge that you have as a company and unlock it for your own value.

There are some basic analytics that we are providing, but they often turn out to be anything but basic. Predictive maintenance is one we developed, because we have such a large variety of machines that you can begin to develop models, like for rotating machines. You can begin to predict failures in rotating machines in a more generic way.

So you very quickly find yourself deep into the kind of processes an organization has, and the machines they have, and how they’ve connected in the way they do business. One steel plant is different than another steel plant; they both produce steel, but there’s different hardware, different vintages, different processes–and there’s even different varieties of steel products.

Every one of these businesses comes with a unique complexity and usage of analytics, and you cannot underestimate the power of that. That’s a differentiator for that organization.

Q: What’s your take on the way intelligent machines will be interacting with humans in the future?

A: People are not going away, but they are going to have to get comfortable with the idea that the jobs that we did are going away, and that the jobs we’re going to do are going to be different. The real key here is that people are going to have to get much more comfortable with the idea that they’re going to need more math and science and tech skills. Those who do will find the transition very easy. Those who don’t will find themselves very uncomfortable with the transition.

The future of autonomous vehicles, for example, isn’t even the tip of the iceberg–it’s a snowflake on the iceberg. The real “autonomouses” are going to occur in the big industries: mining, rail, marine, energy, et cetera. Plants are all going to move to be more autonomous; it doesn’t mean zero people, but it does mean people will be doing things to keep the autonomous nature of work moving.

Q: What is GE Digital’s approach to the “smart city” concept that IBM and others are so involved in at this time?

A: We have a different perspective on this. You don’t walk into a mayor’s office and say, “I have a smart city, would you like to buy one?” My personal opinion is that we are misunderstanding what a smart city is. Smart cities have been happening for a long time. It’s a great marketing term, but the reality is that the intelligence is occurring in the systems that we’ve always had. The water departments are buying more autonomous systems; the energy groups are buying more energy. The buying centers were always there; there’s no new buying center for a smart city. The concept of smart cities making our cities more efficient is the same concept as autonomous vehicles.

The answer is: We don’t talk about selling smart cities; we talk about selling smart infrastructure projects. Smart cities are happening around the world because the traditional buying centers are buying that capability. By the way, that’s been going on for 100 years.

What is changing in many of these organizations is the ability to manage the city horizontally–the ability to finally get information and connect things that weren’t connected before because they operated in siloed infrastructures. That’s the new thing in these environments.

Originally published on eWeek

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