GE At the forefront of new industrial transformations

With the theme of "Shaping Innovative Societies in the Fourth Industrial Revolution", the World Economic Forum's "12th Annual Meeting of the New Champions" kicks of this week in Tianjin. The event, commonly known as "Summer Davos", will focus on new innovations - including AI, machine learning, the internet of things, and connected devices - as well as the challenge of centering these technologies on the current and impending needs of humanity. As the leader of a company that is at the forefront of this technological change, Rachel Duan, president and CEO of GE China, shares some of her thoughts on this new industrial revolution.

Q: GE has a history of over 125 years and has witnessed the Second and Third Industrial Revolutions during this time. How do you view the Fourth Industrial Revolution, and what does it mean for the industrial sector?

A: The industrial world has been shaped by a series of new technology changes over the last 250 years: steam and rail (1750-1830), electricity and telephone (1880-1920), computers and information technology (1960-2000), and the current era of the industrial internet of things and big data (2010-present). Each technological revolution has introduced a wave of productivity improvements accompanied by market disruptions. While some industrial leaders were displaced by the rise of agile new competitors, others that invested in new capabilities often retained their market position.

The current technological change is marked by ever more powerful software and falling hardware costs. Today's predictive algorithms and machine-learning capabilities enable applications that were not possible even five years ago, while the falling costs of sensors, computing, storage and bandwidth are making these capabilities a financial reality. The result is not only the ability to develop a high-resolution view of the future behavior of critical assets, but also the ability to develop a system view of an entire enterprise operation. Combined with the potential of additive manufacturing - which is radically changing how enterprises are able to design and build critical assets - industrial companies are now entering a new period of explosive value creation.

Q: How has GE invested in these new capabilities and what has it done to differentiate itself from its competitors?

A: While much has been written about the digital transformation of industry, few industrial companies have undertaken the daunting work of actually transforming. GE has and is - driven by our unique combination of deep industrial domain expertise as well as software competencies. We have been doing this to first drive internal productivity, and are now applying our learnings to develop solutions for our customers.

A large part of our advantage is the fact that we have invested heavily in these capabilities for ourselves, and developed local capabilities close to our customers. In China for instance, we opened our Advanced Manufacturing Technology Center in Tianjin, our first outside the United States, which brings together an ecosystem of advanced manufacturing technology providers to develop, integrate, and deploy tailored "Brilliant Factory" solutions that improve productivity gains for local manufacturers. These Brilliant Factories are designed to incorporate lean and advanced manufacturing techniques, with digital applications optimizing operations from design to supplier management. Solutions we have been implementing through the center include auto-testing, robotic welding, digital assembly, and additive manufacturing.

Meanwhile, to help drive our customers' digital transformation journeys, we set up our Shanghai Digital Foundry, where we bring together our designers, data scientists, software engineers, and domain experts to co-create our customers' digital transformations, customized to their maturity and aspirations.

Q: How have these initiatives and technological advances enabled you to help customers, and what solutions are you providing for customers in China?

A: GE's typical digital solution - the fully predictive Asset Performance Management family - focuses on our primary industrial vertical sectors of aviation, power, and healthcare. APM enables intelligent asset strategies that balance three traditionally competing priorities - reducing cost, improving availability and reliability, and managing risk - to help optimize overall asset and operational performance. Projects we have launched in China cover GE's key vertical sectors, including aviation, healthcare, and power.

For the aviation sector, we have developed the FlightPulse app, which analyzes massive amounts of data generated from each flight and provides updates on critical indicators to pilots through mobile devices. Pilots can conveniently access and understand their flight operation and behavior in real-time. By enabling customized flight training for individual pilots to enhance specific flight operations and reduce potential risks in advance, the FlightPulse app can improve the flight safety of a fleet.

Meanwhile, in power, the GE-Datang Monitoring& Diagnostics Center launched in late 2017 connects 13 fleets from six power plants, generating 2.3 gigabytes of data through 10,875 sensors equipped across the fleets. The M&D center helps connected power plants successfully avoid millions of yuan in operating costs from outages.

And in Healthcare, GE @ Asset APM is an integrated intelligent equipment management program based on smart data analysis and optimization across the entire life-cycle of medical equipment. Since its launch in May 2017, it has been signed by hundreds of hospitals nationwide, including Sir Run Run Shaw Hospital in Zhejiang province, the affiliated hospital of Xuzhou Medical University, Guangdong North People's Hospital and Hunan Provincial People's Hospital, which have all improved their overall equipment operation and maintenance efficiency by 10 percent or more.

Q: How do you see these solutions shaping society in the future, especially in China?

A: Today, China is facing a host of growing market needs, as well as opportunities to drive new growth through innovation and domestic consumption. The demand for clean energy, affordable healthcare and mass transportation driven by urbanization all represent the mega-needs of China's future. This includes a power market that is expected to grow at an annual rate of nearly 5 percent until 2020, all while moving toward clean energy and natural gas; a healthcare market that is expected to grow as the number of people above 65 years will hit 170 million by 2020; and an air travel sector which is expected to make China the largest aviation market globally in terms of passenger flow within 10 to 15 years.

The technologies of the Fourth Industrial Revolution have the ability to transform all of the aforementioned industries and represent an incredible opportunity for China to upgrade its industry. Companies must embrace these new technologies and effectively deploy them across their organizations in ways that generate the greatest value. Those that are able to do this will be able to usher in a new age of productivity and value creation. At GE, we are building out these capabilities for ourselves, and doing our part to assist our partners, customers and suppliers in their digital industrial transformations as well - connecting machines, software, and data analytics to unlock industrial productivity and help upgrade China's industry.

(China Daily 09/19/2018 page13)