Industrial automation will drive new levels of innovation that we have not seen before in cities.
This is according to Zeenith Ebrahim, GM & CEO of General Electric (GE) Technologies SA, speaking yesterday at the MTN Business Machine2Machine IOT Conference in Johannesburg.
"I can't imagine anything having as much impact as extending industrial automation to the cloud," she pointed out.
Ebrahim discussed the impact of industrial Internet of things (IIOT) applications in creating value in different business settings, emphasising that IIOT will bring unprecedented opportunities to business and society.
"At GE, we believe the IIOT, also known as the industrial Internet, is the bringing together of intelligent machines, advanced analytics, and people at work. It's the network of a multitude of devices connected by communications technologies that results in systems that can monitor, collect, exchange, analyse, and deliver valuable new insights like never before. These insights can then help drive smarter, faster business decisions for industrial companies," she explained.
The first IIOT-use cases focused on reducing unplanned downtime of key industrial assets such as power-generation machines and mining equipment. However, industrial companies are now aggressively increasing the surface area of instrumented assets beyond just expensive critical machines, she asserted.
"For starters if you can reduce downtime by predicting when parts or equipment will fail and order replacements in advance, it means you are already improving productivity. Apart from reducing costs, we also include risk management as part of asset performance management (APM). APM allows us to do compliance and integrity management by monitoring changing risk conditions."
A report by Accenture estimates the IIOT could add $14.2 trillion to the global economy by 2030.
"Arguably the biggest driver of productivity and growth in the next decade, IIOT will accelerate the reinvention of sectors that account for almost two-thirds of world output.
"As the world struggles to emerge from a phase of weak productivity growth, fragile employment and pockets of inadequate demand, businesses and governments need to intensify their efforts and escalate investments," says Accenture.
Ebrahim made reference to Predix, GE's cloud-based platform as a service for the collection and analysis of data from industrial machines.
"By connecting industrial equipment, analysing data, and delivering real-time insights, Predix-based apps are unleashing new levels of performance of both GE and non-GE assets. If you can optimise your rail network for example, it means you can have more velocity (more locomotives) on your network leading to increase throughput hence maximising your network capacity."
If you can make your industrial assets intelligent and connected, there are various ways to reduce costs and inefficiencies and as a result increase profit margins, concluded Ebrahim.
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