The Internet “can give consumers nearly anything with just a click, but global economies remain challenged,” says Jeff Immelt, GE chairman and CEO. The Internet’s real opportunity for change, he says, is a new global network connecting not just people and data, but also “intelligent” machines. “It is what we call the Industrial Internet,” Immelt says. “It is revolutionizing the services we provide our customers, helping them become efficient and productive.”
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GE is investing $1 billion in Industrial Internet applications and the effort is already delivering results. Speaking today at GE’s Mind + Machines conference in San Francisco, Immelt announced nine new “intelligent” service technologies that combine machine diagnostics software and analytics. The new products have the potential to cut $150 billion in waste across major industries like aviation, rail, energy, and healthcare, GE says. GE also formed Taleris, a joint-venture between GE Aviation and the consulting firm Accenture, that will harness aircraft performance data and build prognostics and planning tools for airlines and cargo carriers to improve their operations.
The nine new services will help customers optimize plants and networks, boost productivity and save millions by reducing fuel costs and flight delays, and improving train scheduling and maintenance, electricity distribution, hospital and factory management, and other areas.
A new Industrial Internet report released by GE on Monday found that all of the major industries can save more than $270 billion over the next 15 years by improving their efficiency by just one percent. “By connecting intelligent machines to each other and ultimately to people, and by combining software and big data analytics, we can push the boundaries of physical and material sciences to change the way the world works,” Immelt said.
This is just the beginning. Immelt said that GE will use the size of its $150 billion services backlog “to develop technologies that improve the performance of our industrial products and grow our dollars per installed base 4 to 5 percent annually.” GE plans to launch 20 new Industrial Internet service technologies in 2013.
