The GE Brief: June 30, 2021

PROUD

In late 2019, when David Ilécio married his longtime partner, he didn’t tell his co-workers that his new spouse was a man. Growing up in a multiracial family, Ilécio had learned to feel protective of his identity and cautious of potential discrimination. “From what I had seen in other parts of my life, when people come out, there are problems,” he says. “I didn’t want that translating to my career.”
 
Coming out and moving up: But in 2020, emboldened by the acceptance he’d received from his mother and his involvement with starting a local chapter of GE Healthcare's African American Forum in Brazil, Ilécio decided it was time to come out and be himself, a choice that also opened up a happier and more productive work life. “I’m connecting to more and more people and getting more creative,” Ilécio says. “Now I can do everything that I want to do. I can speak the way I want to speak.” In fact, speaking up for others is now part of the 16-year GE Healthcare veteran’s official work description: He recently added the title of diversity and inclusion ambassador to his public profile.
 
Read more about David Ilécio’s journey here, and celebrate Pride Month with us.
 

NEW POWER GENERATION
 
When it comes to addressing climate change, power plays an important role. That’s what Scott Strazik, CEO of GE Power, pointed out in a keynote address June 22 at Global Energy Transition 2022, sponsored by Reuters. The five-day conference brought together leaders from energy, business and government to shed light on what Strazik called the “human right” of access to energy. The power sector, which produces about 40 percent of all carbon dioxide, is central in the transition to cleaner energy. Decarbonizing electricity, as GE is “rapidly working to do,” he said, “will deliver tremendous returns for the climate.”
 
Just the start: While the world has made substantial progress, “we need to dramatically move the needle,” Strazik said. That means deep investments in wind, solar and natural gas today while looking to hydrogen, carbon-capture technologies and small nuclear plants tomorrow. GE is a world leader in renewables, and the company has more than six million operating hours using hydrogen fuels in its gas turbine fleet. “2021 is a critical year,” Strazik said. “Decisions and investments will set the course for years to come.”
 
To hear more about what GE is doing to usher in the global energy transition, click here.
 

BUILDING PROGRESS
 
GE Chairman and Chief Executive Officer Larry Culp was cited by Barron’s as one of the top 30 CEOs of 2021 for building a “leaner, meaner, more profitable GE.” The doubling of GE’s stock since last summer appears to be more than just a COVID-19 bounce, the paper said, noting that “there are signs of deeper change afoot.” Core units such as Renewable Energy and Healthcare enjoy “fast growth and steady returns,” while the Aviation business was strong enough to “weather a pandemic downturn.” Barron’s pointed out that when Culp was named CEO in 2018, he promptly took steps to face long-standing structural problems, including cutting costs and debt.
 
Onward and upward: Those views were underscored by Culp when he announced first-quarter earnings in April that “marked a solid start to 2021.” The progress, he said, has come as GE has transformed itself into a more focused, simpler and stronger industrial company. As he told Barron’s, inside the company “people see the momentum that they have generated.”
 
Read more about GE's transformation efforts here.
 

LEAN SWEEP
 
In the 1970s, a team of MIT researchers traveled to Japan to figure out why the country’s automakers were delivering cars faster than their Detroit competitors. What they learned at Toyota — that company’s famous Toyota Production System — would make its way back across the Pacific Ocean as lean management, a set of operating principles focused on boosting safety, quality and efficiency, reducing waste and creating more value with fewer resources. Lean is also the engine helping GE Chairman and CEO Larry Culp and his team drive GE’s turnaround. As Betsy Bingham, GE Aviation vice president and operations leader, put it: “Lean is our strategy, lean is how we are going to run our business, it’s key to our growth.”
 
Powerful gains: A recent success story drawing on lean management practices involved one of the world’s most powerful jet engines, which had been adapted into a machine that can generate electricity. Last year, amid the global pandemic, an international team of engineers from GE Aviation was able to reduce the cost of four parts in that machine by as much as 35% over just 10 months using additive technology. Meanwhile, in January of this year, teams as far afield as Hungary and South Carolina huddled remotely to improve gas turbine maintenance, finding a way to cut the time it takes to replace a critical turbine component from 25 hours to 13. “It was cross-value chain collaboration in action,” said Funmi-Lola Ajayi, North America Region fulfillment leader. “It was a beautiful thing to watch.”
 
Click here for a roundup of GE’s lean success stories.
 

ADVANCING AI
 
This week, the Association for Advancing Automation (A3) named GE Research’s John Lizzi chairman of the board of a new, ambitious initiative called the Artificial Intelligence Technology Strategy Board. Lizzi, executive leader for robotics at GE Research, will chair the effort, made up of executives from leading AI and tech companies, whose aim is “to promote education and adoption of the applications of artificial intelligence in automation industries,” according to BusinessWire.
 
Real intelligence: Lizzi, who earned an M.S. from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute and an MBA from SUNY-Albany, has been with GE for more than two decades and holds 11 patents. He and his team do work all across GE’s industrial portfolio to drive robotics and autonomy, including applications in field services, manufacturing and defense domains. “We are in the midst of what some have called a Cambrian explosion in robotics,” says Lizzi, who sees “robots, and specifically industrial robotics, as moving through three phases: robots as tools to robots as partners, and ultimately to robots that sustain the things we care about.”
 
Read more about John Lizzi and his team’s robotics research here.
 

THE COOLEST THINGS ON EARTH ?
 
1. Picturing Quiet
Scientists in England have transformed transparent plastic sheets into lightweight, super-effective noise-canceling panels.
 
2. This Microscope Stacks Up
A research team in Germany built a high-resolution microscope from Lego blocks and cheap cellphone parts.
 
3. Big Data Fights Kidney Cancer
U.K. researchers used machine learning technologies to discover the origins of several rare childhood kidney cancers.

Learn more here about this week’s Coolest Things On Earth.