Hundreds Gather at the 2019 GE Digital User Conference

What a day! More than 300 customers, partners and industry leaders joined us for the first day of the 2019 GE Digital User Conference. Our time together was jam packed with dozens of customer stories, product demonstrations, and celebrations of the new product enhancements announced Tuesday morning.

We kicked off the conference with a welcome from CEO Pat Byrne who reinforced our commitment to customer immersion in everything we do. GE Digital’s depth of experience is a powerful engine for innovation, but it must be grounded in our customers’ business imperatives to drive lasting value. There’s nothing more important we can do at this conference than listen to and learn from each other.

Next, it was our pleasure to welcome Forrester analyst, Frank Gillett who reminded us that every company is doing IoT, but not every company is doing it intentionally. The organizations that are strategic about their efforts can not only better control operational costs, but can introduce entirely new business models.

The breakout presentations and panel discussions were all about realizing Pat and Frank’s vision of using IIoT to realize new possibilities. Here are some of the highlights shared throughout the day.

• SES Water is moving from "customer as a sensor" with high latency of information, to "property as a sensor" with almost no latency via IoT. This essential move is core to them meeting regulatory mandates to reduce water leakage by 15%, according to Jeremy Heath, Senior Innovation Manager.

• Toni McILvenna, a Reliability Leader from Xcel Energy shared how even a 1% decrease in unplanned outages has a huge impact on the customers they serve.   

• Scott White, a Fixed Equipment Systems Leader with Flint Hills Resources uses GE Digital to implement exception management of more than 50,000+ inspection tasks. The results mean greater visibility & more confidence.

• Jacqueline Grunwald, VP & CIO of AdvanSix shared how the company turned to GE Digital APM to automate processes and uncover hidden capacity.

• The team at JM Smucker Co explained how they integrated Plant Applications data with their analytics engine to drive greater cross-plant visibility for five pet product plants. Exploring just one use case – overfill – already uncovered $500,000 in annual savings.

• Since implementing GE Digital’s SmartSignal and Historian solutions in 2015, Gerdau has been able to reduce maintenance costs by 10-15%, avoiding several catastrophic failures all while reducing time-based maintenance plans by 5,000 hours.

• Bryan Graham, a Process Engineering Managed from Ocean Spray, reminded us that the timing projects is key. When the team has metric curiosity, it's the perfect time to enhance visualization. 

• A power panel of leaders from Suncor Energy, Flint Hills Resources, Chevron Phillips, Irving Oil and Total reminded us that building a business case for APM requires documenting the business decisions you will make using the data.

• “Never call it an IT project. It loses its business value if you label it that way." Wise words from John Kmetz, an Engineering Leader at Chevron Phillips on driving support for APM projects

• Brooke Cox, Lead M&R Enablement Projects at Suncor Energy, reminded us to avoid complacency once a project has been approved. Since organizational memory fades, it is important to be vigilant about documenting each project’s progress.

• Ross Hegefeld, a Mechanical Engineer with Chevron Philips mapped out the company’s measurement strategy for success. COO KPIs ensure people understand what should be done, while OD KPIs measure whether the instructions are being followed.

Whew! There was so much learning from Day 1. Read the highlights from Day 2.

For those who couldn’t be with us in Austin, we encourage you to explore  #GEDUC19 on Twitter and LinkedIn.