2018 Digital Innovator Awards: Announcing the Biggest Industrial Disruptors

The Industrial Internet is transforming the way we enable productivity, asset availability, and efficiency. Each year, GE Digital recognizes our customers who are driving innovation forward. In partnership with these organizations, we’re not only able to deliver new, innovative technology solutions, but push the future of digital. It’s our honor to recognize these organizations that exemplify the possibilities digital transformation promises by finding new ways to operate their businesses.  

Join us in congratulating the 2018 Digital Innovators Award winners and finalists for their inspiring commitment to putting the Industrial Internet to work.

Leveraging IIoT to knock down data silos

The Harnessing Data Award recognizes those that are leveraging digital industrial technologies to bring together data silos to improve visibility, efficiency, productivity, and quality while also reducing cost and waste.

Global mining and metals company and Deloitte

A global mining and metals company has embarked on a digital transformation journey partnering with Deloitte, GE Digital, and GE Digital Mine to utilize Predix Asset Performance Management (Predix APM) across their business. 

Applying Predix APM aims to ultimately deliver a change in their asset management from being reactive to preventative, in turn improving asset health and reliability, and reducing downtime, risk and maintenance cost.

Nova Scotia Power

Like many utility companies, Nova Scotia Power (NSP) faced a series of challenges that included aging generating assets, growing knowledge gap, changing generation profile and utilization, increasing stakeholder scrutiny, and need for increasing transparency by regulatory agencies. A key to meeting those challenges was the standardization of their work management processes throughout their steam, hydro, and combustion turbines fleet.

To overcome these challenges, the NSP Asset Management team partnered with GE Digital and GE Power Digital to apply real-time analytics to their APM program, following a progressive strategy consisting of focus on and improvements within their work management, reliability, advanced technology, information management, and asset planning processes.  Specifically, they use APM Health and APM Strategy, part of the Predix APM solution suite, to manage and extract value from their flood of asset-related information—providing ongoing, near real-time visibility to their fleet assets’ health to enable informed decisions around strategies for improving the collective reliability of the fleet. More recently, NSP has begun to use the policy designer capabilities in Predix APM to perform operational risk assessments of selected asset families to allow for better prioritization of their resources, capital, and labor on asset classes showing the greatest or unacceptable risk to the business. These benefits have translated into millions in cost savings over 5 years.

Driving transformation through change management 

The Innovation Culture Award is given to a company that has exhibited innovative use of culture and change management to drive digital transformation.

EDP

As a top performer among its peers, EDP is becoming a true digital utility, being deeply focused on enterprise digital transformation and showing an extensive commitment to instituting cultural change towards their new digital business model. In this transformational journey, they have partnered with GE Digital and GE Power Digital to incorporate several digital asset management and optimization tools such as Predix APM, Predix OPM, Predix Studio, BoilerOpt, and FastWorks.

This partnership will allow EDP drive an integrated asset management strategy based on predictive analytics and GE Digital to leverage its products on EDP’s know-how and vision.

EQUATE Petrochemical 

The EQUATE Group, a global producer of petrochemicals and the world’s second largest producer of Ethylene Glycol (EG), started their asset performance management implementation in 2013 with the vision to improve overall plant reliability and replace multiple point solutions. In order to achieve this objective, EQUATE partnered with GE Digital and BHGE Digital to institute APM and its various capabilities, including Asset Strategy (along with Asset Strategy library), Mechanical Integrity, Failure Elimination, Production Loss Accounting, Operator Rounds and Asset Safety work processes. Having an asset centric solution allows EQUATE to leverage data and information in a timely manner to minimize risks and ensure effective decision making. Availability of real-time data on a single platform has helped improve efficiency and retrieval of information by 10-20%. Currently, EQUATE is planning to roll out the existing APM blueprint across their manufacturing sites in North America. 

Delivering optimal customer support and satisfaction 

The Customer Impact Award honors a company that is leveraging IIoT technologies to deliver digital transformation that’s positively impacting their customers through improved customer satisfaction, customer service, or loyalty.

SIG

SIG is a leading systems and solutions provider for aseptic packaging to deliver food and beverages to consumers across the world in a safe, sustainable and affordable way. SIG’s customers fill more than 10,000 unique products into SIG packaging across 65 countries worldwide. SIG established a strategic partnership with GE Digital and is pioneering Predix Asset Performance Management (APM) and Predix ServiceMax—a co-developed fully integrated implementation for asset monitoring and service delivery based on predictive analytics. Predix APM will monitor the health of factory filling lines populated with SIG equipment across more than 400 customer factories worldwide. The system will then pass maintenance data to Predix ServiceMax, so that SIG field technicians can be summoned for routine maintenance and problem-solving tasks and keep a record of work performed on a specific machine on behalf of the customer. The loop then closes as that data is funneled back into Predix APM, fueling the system’s ability to predict future breakdowns, using artificial intelligence capabilities.

SIG plans to further develop their Connected Pack solution and bring it onto GE's Predix Platform to generate new possibilities for integrated traceability and digital marketing solutions. This will allow new ways of direct interaction between SIG, its food and beverage customers, retailers and the consumers. 

Sumitomo Mitsui Banking Corporation 

Sumitomo Mitsui Banking Corporation (SMBC) has partnered with GE Digital to build an IIoT platform for its industry customers with GE’s Predix Platform, Essentials, APM, Automation, MES, as well as Data Science and Digital Transformation Advisory Services so that they can drive efficiency and optimization. For the bank’s customers, this means the bank will be helping them with gaining visibility into their operations through intuitive dashboards which can help the customers drive efficiency in their manufacturing operations and also drive cash conversion cycle optimization. And, because the bank can access manufacturing data, they can better underwrite risk when extending finance to their industrial customers.  The solution is expected to help with customer retention, better risk management, expansion in lending and financing portfolio and new customer acquisition.

Enabling better outcomes through GE Digital Services

The Most Innovative Use of GE Digital Services Award recognizes a company that has demonstrated innovation and achievement in reimagining their business and/or industry by leveraging GE Digital’s Customer Success Services to drive higher productivity and better outcomes. 

Obeikan Investment Group

Obeikan Investment Group (OIG) is a leading manufacturing and distribution company that offers flexible and rigid packaging, liquid packaging, plastics and paper conversion, printing, publishing, and fabric coating services across the Middle East, Africa, and Turkey. OIG began to partner with GE Digital in 2016 with a vision to achieve manufacturing excellence across their plants and become a data-driven organization by adopting Digital Transformation. Working closely with teams across GE Digital, they are developing and co-innovating solutions to deliver better outcomes for OIG, as well as their customers, and their partners. The first outcome they have achieved is leveraging real-time production data to maximize Overall Equipment Effectiveness (OEE), improve production efficiency, and ensure product quality. In addition to GE Digital's Manufacturing Execution Systems, OIG has completed the first Asset Performance Management-Asset Strategy Optimization pilot within a manufacturing space. The digital solutions have contributed to a 5% reduction in total delivery cost savings to date. Subsequent phases will focus on Predix APM and Predix ServiceMax rollouts across their factories, with an expected outcome to reduce maintenance cost, optimize spare parts, and eliminate unplanned shutdown. To support this, OIG has created Obeikan Digital Solutions (ODS) to lead digital transformation inside and outside the Group. ODS will offer the Obeikan Manufacturing Excellence (OME) program to customers, as well as marketplace applications, and the Auto Pilot solution.

Volvo Car Corporation

PRIME, the Global Engine MES solution, has been implemented by Volvo Cars. PRIME has already been deployed to sites in China and Sweden and is in the process of being rolled out globally to all Volvo engine manufacturing sites. To do so, they partnered with GE Digital to develop PRIME, which is currently managing 10 production lines responsible for the manufacturing of engines and components at its China and Sweden sites.

In 2018, PRIME evolved to include Behavior-Driven Development (BDD), an agile development process that emerged from Test-Driven Development (TDD). BDD has improved the application delivery process allowing Volvo to increase production and achieving production output.

Unlocking next-level productivity for customers 

The Ecosystem Excellence Award is bestowed on a company that has demonstrated innovation and achievement in helping customers reimagine their business and/or industry through digital solutions that are driving higher productivity and better outcomes.

Intel Corporation

Intel and GE Digital both understand the value of ecosystems and the importance of forging strong partnerships in this new world of Digital Transformation. Bringing together GE’s experience and pedigree in transforming asset centric businesses with Intel’s technology and manufacturing domain expertise was core to both business as we thought about what IIoT could mean in this new world. 

By overcoming those challenges and by combining GE Digital's Asset Performance Management suite with Intel’s edge technology and domain they achieved:

• Increased Fan Filter Unit uptime by over 97%, improving our factory floor operations.
• Detecting inconsistencies in FFU vibrations has decreased excursion.
• Technicians and tool owners can more quickly identify changes in FFU health.
• Reduced our unscheduled downtime by 300% over our previous manual inspection process by ordering parts ahead of time.

Intel is now partnering with GE Digital to work with OEMs and suppliers to learn how a partnership approach, along with external domain expertise, can further enhance the value of this IIoT solution across Intel’s supply chain.

Congratulations to all the winners for their commitment to driving industry forward and embracing the benefits of digital transformation.