Five years ago, GE (GE)'s business accounted for a large proportion of finance, and is now accelerating its return to the industrial sector. In the financial crisis, GE Chairman and CEO Jeff Immelt proposed to increase the company's industrial revenue to 70% of the overall business, while the financial camp contraction reduced to 30%. The pace of this major transformation has been in the past few years. Without slowing down, in this context, the Industrial Internet was proposed and came to China as one of the company's global strategic priorities.
On May 8th, "China Electronics News" reporter interviewed Yang Tao, general manager of GE Industrial Internet Greater China. She bluntly said that the implementation of the industrial Internet strategy is related to the result of GE transformation and is an attempt not to fail.
Reporter: Based on what considerations GE's industrial Internet concepts and strategies are based on?
Yang Tao: Whether it is the customers in all fields we are involved in or GE itself, in recent years, we are faced with the rising cost and the requirement of operating rate. We all have a great sense of urgency. We hope that the future industry will become more efficient through transformation. It is required that the Industrial Internet Strategy came into being. As the industry leader, GE first advocated the original intention of the Industrial Internet for the guidance of the market and industry, to help our customers bring operational efficiency and business model changes, and to create more for them from technology, business model and service. The space for innovation. It should be said that the industrial Internet is the inevitable result of the continuous evolution of the industry's competitive environment and the increasingly mature interaction between software and hardware technologies, rather than derivatives of the consumer Internet.
The Industrial Internet promotes the seamless collaboration of adults, devices, and data to enable the convergence of the digital (software) world and the physical (machine) world. Therefore, its focus is not limited to a single device, automated process or local production facilities. It is more focused on re-shaping the entire industrial ecological chain through interconnection and value mining of big data, inspiring innovation and efficiency from all aspects. From the concept, design, manufacture, production and production of products to the supply chain and logistics management, we are flowing to the market, so the coverage is a larger ecosystem. The industrial Internet is based on asset optimization and operational optimization. Asset optimization is to make full use of IoT technology, big data editing technology, cloud computing technology, mobile technology and other technology platforms to realize real-time management and optimization of assets and equipment; operational optimization emphasizes business systems, decision systems and core production systems and management systems. Collaboration and synchronization, in addition to data integration and integration based on ERP, as well as engineering process automation, automation of production line public management, and even emissions management, security management and so on.
For China's industry, asset optimization and operational optimization are actually one of the areas of concern for China Manufacturing 2025. In recent years, Chinese authorities have also realized the importance of improving their core business capabilities, improving efficiency and reducing energy consumption. This is also an important orientation for the transformation of the entire industrial form. Whether it is energy, home appliances, aviation or oil and gas, it is necessary to create a new market structure. Enterprises need a global perspective and make decisions from the perspective of the ecological chain. We believe that the Industrial Internet can provide a good way to do this.
Reporter: In terms of industrial Internet, GE has major initiatives every year. For example, in 2013, 14 industry solutions were released, and in 2006, the Predix platform was opened. So, what new measures will GE have this year?
Yang Tao: GE's industrial Internet strategy in China is currently advancing through three aspects. First, continue to promote GE's industrial Internet pilot projects in the fields of aviation, electric power, medical care, etc., through direct communication and cooperation with customers, to jointly achieve technological innovation, business model innovation and service model innovation, and promote successful experience. In these respects, we have made some progress. For example, our cooperation with local airlines in the field of fuel management and engine preventive maintenance has helped our customers to change the way they used to rely on industry experience to determine the aircraft maintenance cycle. Real-time data analysis to accurately diagnose and determine maintenance schedules, while improving safety while reducing maintenance costs; and in the medical field, we and medical institutions in the optimization of equipment assets will increase the operating rate of many hospitals More than 98%, for hospitals facing heavy medical tasks and patients requiring timely medical services, lower downtime has a very important value.
GE's cooperation with Chinese partners in the industrial Internet is also more important because of the shaping of the industry's ecological chain, such as GE and telecom operators' cooperative data centers and cloud service platforms, and network equipment suppliers in the Internet of Things and communication equipment. Cooperation in other fields. In our view, the industrial Internet ecosystem requires extremely diverse businesses and technologies to participate in, each of which will play a different role in it, and ultimately together to complete the model innovation in the entire industry chain. Of course, we will also closely communicate with relevant government agencies and various industry associations, participate in the development of standards required by the Industrial Internet, and contribute to GE's industry insights and best practices that have achieved results.
Reporter: What are the projects that GE Industrial Internet has already landed in China, what is the progress or results?
Yang Tao: In terms of application, our current main focus is aviation, power generation, power grid and electric field, and medical care. Some GE industrial Internet projects are currently in the process of being implemented. We have started some industrial Internet projects with China Eastern Airlines, Commercial Aircraft and local leading power companies. Since GE has a specific customer base in many industries, we will start to promote industrial Internet projects from these customers. According to the difference of customer industry, we will provide them with different project promotion roadmaps and through special solutions, such as smart power plants in the field of power generation, equipment asset management in the medical field, intelligent wind drive technology in the wind field, and aviation. Fuel management and full-range predictive maintenance, smart factory solutions in manufacturing, and more.
The current state of affairs is that every industry has a pilot idea, and each has its own control, and some have been carried out in half, and some have just begun. In terms of the scope of industrial Internet projects, it is essentially the integration of software and equipment, through real-time data collection, communication between devices, software based on analysis and prediction, mining assets from big data and more operational status. Insight and feedback to the entire operating system to achieve better output. Among them, the development of some of the most popular key technologies in the industry has been greatly promoted, such as the underlying data layout network, the Internet of Things layout, and CIO and CTO are closely watching and researching data pool technology.
In the coming months, we will open the industrial Internet software platform Predix to all enterprises. All manufacturers can develop their own applications, and Predix will become a common software platform in the industrial field. As the foundation of the industrial cloud, Predix also adopts an open source architecture to provide users with openness and accessibility, ensuring a stable and improved software platform for enterprise operation optimization and cost control, while retaining a considerable portion of customization. Space provides a guarantee for the continued development of equipment learning, artificial intelligence and other further upgrades in the future.
Reporter: What is GE's overall strategy and development focus in recent years?
Yang Tao: GE has been undergoing transformation. The most notable example is that GE's financial business accounted for 70% of the overall business during the financial crisis. At that time, GE proposed to go to financialization, hoping to reverse the business sector and make the industry account for 70%. %, finance accounts for 30%. The business of home appliances and plastics has now been stripped out, and financialization is still in progress. GE has become a century-old store because he has been keenly capturing the most critical and core changes in the market and redefining his business through innovation. We believe that the industrial Internet is our next important opportunity. The Industrial Internet is one of the most important strategic directions that GE can foresee in the future. Now, GE has more than 12,000 software technicians in various R&D projects worldwide. For this reason, GE has invested more than 1 billion US dollars. In Greater China, we also deployed a team that was directly led by the CEO of Greater China to bring the Industrial Internet project to the line of business, gain experience and awareness through pilot projects, and slowly expand.
In GE's view, the Industrial Internet is an attempt not to fail. Immelt had foreseen for several years that he might wake up from a traditional industrial equipment manufacturer last night to a software company specializing in analysis and forecasting services. This change has already begun, and this will be a firm transformation that will not go backwards. Now GE’s question is already whether to embrace the industrial Internet, but how to continue to establish competitiveness in the industrial Internet era, which will define GE’s future industry. An important change in leadership.
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