I am starting to receive press notes like this one, to make sure I attend a press conference or a session at the forthcoming ARC Forum 10-13 February in Orlando, Fla. I most certainly will attend both sessions, time allowing.
From Sofia Giannello at GE:
GE Intelligent Platforms has just announced new software designed to help manufacturers transform their operations to take advantage of the business potential enabled by the Industrial Internet and make it a reality. They’ll be able to better manage the explosion of data it is creating and use it to more effectively handle their ongoing challenges around more quickly producing products while reducing WIP, maintaining quality, streamlining the supply chain and reducing warranty costs.
We are clearly learning that manufacturing is more about data than widgets. This may in fact be true, considering that the best use of “big data” is to improve our ability to make widgets faster, better, cheaper, and more consistently than when we were data-blind and our managements only saw financial rollups that were over a month old.
The new software being offered to manufacturers has specifically been assembled to address their most critical imperatives, as outlined in a recent poll by LNS Research — consistent quality (66%); responsiveness to customer demands (56%) and increasing production capacity and capabilities (49%). The new capabilities are in Proficy OEE, Plant Applications, Scheduler, Open Enterprise, Vision, Datamart, and Tracker applications, as well as in Proficy for Manufacturing Discrete. Proficy software is designed to provide “out of the box solutions” so users can deploy and see value quickly.
These are the imperatives manufacturers tell LNS or other researchers. I have yet to see ANY deep qualitative research to back up poll data. I would LIKE to see qualitative research, I would.
Bob Gates, a long-time plant manager himself who is GE Intelligent Platforms’ manufacturing marketing director, will be discussing this news and the problems being solved at a press conference from 3:35-4:05pm on the Monday (2/10) of the ARC Industry Forum (Coral A, Renaissance Orlando Hotel) and will be available to answer questions about this new Proficy offering and how it is making the Industrial Internet a reality.
Additionally, Bernie Anger, GE Intelligent Platforms’ GM of Control and Communication Systems, will be participating in a panel on the final day of the forum (2/13) from 8:30-10am (location: room Oceans 12) on “Enabling the Information Driven Enterprise” and the use of PROFINET in the enterprise. Bernie will be using the opportunity to detail the value in linking PROFINET to the Industrial Internet.
This one is something I am extremely interested in, not because of Profinet especially, but because the cause of linking realtime performance data to the enterprise is critical to doing all those other cool things with manufacturing that we need to do.