If you’ve recently traveled overseas on a Boeing 777 plane, it’s quite likely that a pair of massive GE90 jet engines powered your ride. More powerful than the rocket that took the first American astronaut, Alan Shepard, into space, the engines are representative of the complex machines that GE has been producing for more than a century. But they also show how GE is connecting physical products with software and making them better. “Manufacturing is not a fixed process,” says Christine Furstoss, vice president and technical director for manufacturing and materials at GE Global Research.