GE Digital held multiple meetings at the recent ARC Forum discussing a number of advancements. Executives talked frankly about the coming break up of GE corporate with a positive spin on Digital landing with the Energy group. I’m not a financial analyst, but this restructuring seems to meet with widespread approval. Perhaps with a new CEO at Digital and new organization we’ll see even more from it. Following are summaries of four announcements from last week.
Proficy Plant Applications Upgrades
GE Digital announced the latest version of its Manufacturing Execution System (MES) Proficy Plant Applications, part of the Proficy Smart Factory portfolio. New features in the 2022 version include expanded discrete manufacturing capabilities developed through co-innovation with existing customers as well as a better user experience for the modern connected worker.
Customer results with Proficy Plant Applications have included saving 45 minutes per shift, per line, per business unit at one of the world’s largest consumer packaged goods (CPG) companies; 3X increase in throughput for an automotive battery manufacturer; and 80% reduction in downtime at a pharmaceutical company.
The new discrete features include extending support for serialized and lot-based discrete manufacturing such as job shops and complex discrete environments. These extensions include the ability to support the execution of very large lots plus the flow of complex routes that include optional, parallel, and mutually exclusive operations. Proficy Plant Applications has also expanded the scope of discrete to include complex receiving inspection rules as well as linking them to non-conformance.
Implementation speed of the Proficy Plant Applications solution has been improved with a new low-code Data Flow Editor, easing integration with other systems, and modelling complex logic. These capabilities allow faster installs and upgrades including seamless ERP integration with approximately 20 out-of-the-box messages for MES-ERP communication.
Proficy Plant Applications is also designed to empower the modern Connected Worker and operating teams with easy, flexible access to their manufacturing data for better decision making. The software provides a contemporary Web User Interface (UI) with widgets as embedded in out-of-the-box screens and available for custom screen development in the software’s no-code development environment.
Available on-premises and in the cloud, the software includes four modules: Efficiency Management, Production Management and Tracking, Quality Management, and Batch Analysis. Proficy Plant Applications is used at thousands of diverse manufacturing sites around the world including top food and beverage, non-food consumer packaged goods, automotive, pharmaceutical, aerospace, chemicals, heavy equipment, and other manufacturers.
GE Digital Partners with Visionaize to Provide 3D Visualization Capabilities to APM
GE Digital announced a technology partnership with Visionaize, a provider of world-class operational 3D Digital Twin solutions. This technology is designed to help empower data-driven businesses with high accuracy visualization capabilities for operational use cases that can help to save time, reduce cost, and improve safety. Visionaize’s V-Suite Starter can be incorporated into GE Digital’s APM Mechanical Integrity software designed to help streamline maintenance activities and improve worker efficiency across asset intensive industries.
While industrial companies can choose to review data and information in any number of formats including plant blueprints, Piping and Instrumentation Diagrams (P&ID), and Isometrics through various means of CAD/CAM software solutions, the implementation of V-Suite Starter is designed to allow users to view real-time and historical asset data on the 3D model to deliver timely and valuable insights at the point of action. The 3D visualizations of key asset information combine “see it, model it, and understand future behavior” to help asset-intensive companies solve key challenges associated with asset downtime, quicker time to resolution, maintenance costs, and workforce productivity.
Visionaize integrates 3D plant models with APM Mechanical Integrity to provide data-driven visualization of key APM Integrity attributes by color coding the model to filter out noise and focus on what matters most. The ability to dynamically visualize and contextualize data for operations and maintenance activities help make inspectors, planners, maintenance technicians, corrosion analysts, and Risk Based Inspection (RBI) analysts more efficient and effective in their daily jobs.
Utilizing 3D visualization in GE Digital’s APM solution can help improve worker safety and productivity with situational awareness and less time spent in hazardous environments. An accurate 3D model is designed to allow recovery planning even before workers can access the site itself to facilitate faster time to resolution. And it can help to optimize maintenance programs with more efficient scheduling to accelerate planned and unplanned downtime activities.
GE Digital Launches Accelerator Tools to Help Energy Companies Accelerate Digital Transformation
GE Digital announced its new Accelerator product line adding best-in-class software tools to help empower companies in asset-intensive energy industries to quickly configure its Asset Performance Management (APM) and other offerings. GE Digital Accelerators are designed to enable faster time to value, scale APM to a wider range of assets, and help enterprises gain financial value at both their facilities and across the enterprise.
GE Digital’s first set of Accelerators includes an extensive library of predictive analytics, asset management strategies, and standard health and reliability processes. These can be applied to the entire energy value chain, from oil & gas to power generation — ranging from renewables like wind and solar to more traditional gas power and nuclear production assets.
Energy companies have used asset management practices for decades on the highest criticality equipment, ensuring high availability to meet the demands of their customers. The increasing complexity and scale of industrial facilities, along with the need for market flexibility, requires applying asset performance practices to a much wider array of equipment, using more advanced digital technologies. Accelerators will help energy companies expand asset management processes without consuming more time and resources building custom configurations and health monitoring techniques.
GE Digital Achieves AWS Energy Competency Status
GE Digital announced that it has achieved Amazon Web Services (AWS) Energy Competency status. This designation recognizes that GE Digital has demonstrated deep expertise leveraging AWS to build, implement, and integrate technology that transforms complex business and operational systems to help accelerate the energy transition.
GE Digital’s Asset Performance Management (APM) solutions for both Power Generation and Oil & Gas industries were the basis of receiving the AWS Energy Competency status. These software solutions are designed to help optimize the performance of industrial assets to increase reliability and availability, to minimize costs, and reduce operational risks. For power generation, this is an imperative as plants must be able to reliably respond to more dynamic operating models as more and more renewables are added.
To receive the AWS Energy Competency Partner status, AWS Partners undergo a rigorous technical validation process, including a customer reference audit. The AWS Energy Competency provides energy customers the ability to more easily select skilled partners to help accelerate their digital transformation with confidence.
