This press release is more than a little puzzling. GE Digital announces its Predix Manufacturing Data Cloud—apparently its own cloud platform. I would swear that I heard 18 months ago about a change in direction where it would leave behind its “not invented here” syndrome and rather than building its own platform from scratch using one of the several available cloud services.
Realistically, IT meets OT in the cloud. Predix Manufacturing Data Cloud exists to fulfill that promise.
Used in concert with a traditional Manufacturing Execution System (MES), Predix MDC gives manufacturers operational analysis in the cloud and greater flexibility of deployment, helping reduce the size of on-premises systems and make them run more efficiently.
“Most companies are only just scratching the surface of realizing their data’s potential. In fact, today manufacturers are losing the value of 70 percent of collected manufacturing data,” said Matt Wells, Vice President of Product Management for GE Digital. “Predix MDC delivers the power of cloud computing to manufacturers, taking the burden of heavy compute loads out of the plant, enabling users to aggregate data from across the business and run analytics that can uncover new insights and unlock even greater efficiencies.”
According to the company, Predix MDC provides next generation cloud functionality to GE Digital’s manufacturing execution system offering, Plant Applications, used by organizations around the world to track and analyze production execution and workflow, as well as manage production data and quality control. Predix MDC provides manufacturers with a secure, reliable way to ingest and store data in the cloud, speeding process implementation by up to 50 percent and giving users rich views into information captured at individual sites as well as the ability to run analytics and comparisons across various locations and data types, including manufacturing, enterprise and asset data. Additionally, MDC can reduce on-premise storage and maintenance costs, freeing up computing systems to focus on core capabilities. Furthermore, moving and storing manufacturing data in the cloud provides an additional level of certainty around data retention regulation compliance and auditing purposes.
It is built to support manufacturing across industries from discrete to process, across sectors like food and beverage, packaging, pulp and paper, automotive, chemical, pharmaceutical and life sciences.
P&G, one of the world’s largest manufacturers of consumer packaged goods (CPG), has been a long-time customer of GE Digital’s Plant Applications Manufacturing Execution System (MES) and is leveraging Predix MDC capabilities by moving manufacturing data and running analytics in the cloud. P&G has already gained a detailed, data-supported view into its manufacturing processes. The new offering is helping the company meet data compliance regulations and significantly increase the speed of its on-premise MES.
Predix MDC is compatible with any third-party application that supports REST APIs for data sourcing, user interface, visualization, analytics and reporting. General availability is expected in Q2 2019.
