April 9, 2019
HOT DATA
By one estimate, 90% of all the data in existence has been created in the last two years, much of it coming from business. From one perspective, that’s a daunting flood of information — but an enormous opportunity from another. “Many executives say data is the new currency,” said Matt Wells, vice president of product management for GE Digital, “because of all the potential value to be unlocked from it.” Wells, his team and customers like Procter & Gamble are forging the keys. P&G, for example, will become the first company to start using a software system, Predix Manufacturing Data Cloud, which promises to help the consumer packaged-goods giant wring as much insight as possible from its manufacturing processes.
Smarter factory: Handled badly, data can be a drag. If companies don’t have a place to store the reams of info their machines are generating, it can physically slow production lines, much as your smartphone can be sluggish when opening, say, the photos app. Predix MDC speeds up manufacturing by distinguishing between hot data — required information that stays on-site — and cold data, which is stored in the cloud until it’s needed. As a result, manufacturing facilities can increase their data processing speeds up to 50%, while reducing downtime by predicting problems before they occur. “Procter & Gamble understands that digital tools like Predix MDC are critical for staying competitive,” Wells said. GE plans to make Predix MDC widely available to manufacturing companies in other industries by summer.
Read more here about how GE is helping factories get smarter about data.
SEEKING SAFER SURGERY
Last fall, GE Reports told the story of Odetha Deus, who required an emergency C-section in a village in Tanzania where “her neighbors believed you didn’t go into an operation and live to see the other side.” But the doctors at Deus’ hospital had been trained through Safe Surgery 2020, as have some 1,200 surgical workers across Tanzania and Ethiopia — and in hours, Deus was sitting at the bedside of her newborn twins. Safe Surgery 2020, launched and funded by the GE Foundation, recently began working in Southeast Asia, while continuing to expand the breadth and scope of its efforts in Africa — for instance, through an initiative to provide a consistent supply of medical oxygen to 40 Ethiopian hospitals. ”Medical oxygen is often the difference between life and death for children with pneumonia,” said David Barash, the foundation’s executive director, “yet it is unavailable in one out of every three health facilities in East Africa.”
A breath of fresh air: Barash said the lack of access to safe surgical procedures is “one of the most significant, yet underestimated, public health crises of our time.” Sunday, April 7, was World Health Day, which Barash and the GE Foundation observed by discussing the work the foundation and its partners are doing through the Safe Surgery 2020 initiative. Besides “training the trainers” who will teach medical teams in developing countries to launch “scalable safe surgery training programs,” the partnership also trains technicians to make sure that vital medical tech, like ventilators and ultrasounds, are shipshape.
Find Barash’s update here on the progress the GE Foundation and its partners are making toward ensuring access to safe surgery worldwide.
THE ART OF SCIENCE
Long before there was “The Cat in the Hat,” there was “The Strange Case of Adlebert Blump,”a cartoon created by Theodor Geisel — aka Dr. Seuss — for a magazine published by General Electric. Geisel was employed as an adman by GE prior to hitting it big as a children’s author, and one of many famous writers and artists to pass through the halls of the American industrial giant on their way to becoming cultural icons themselves. Norman Rockwell, Kurt Vonnegut, Maxfield Parrish — they’re each a little bit of the GE story, just as GE played a little part in their careers.
A beacon of light: Parrish, for instance, created one of the best-selling art prints of the 20th century: the painting “Daybreak.” He also created illustrations for the immensely popular Edison Mazda Lamp Calendar, which GE commissioned work for, from a variety of artists, every year from 1926 to 1960. (Nowadays the calendars are collector’s items, fetching up to $500 at auction.) Parrish’s paintings are notable for their exuberant depictions of light, so it makes sense that he would team up with the company that brought it into American homes; designing ads for a 1920s campaign for the company’s Mazda electric lamps, Rockwell was likewise tickled by the possibilities of man-made illumination.
GE has since moved on to bigger things, like jet engines — and the artists followed. Click here to learn about the kid who designed an entire Boeing plane out of manila folders, and many other artists GE has been associated with in its long history.
COOLEST THINGS ON EARTH ?
1. Mamma Mia!
Researchers at MIT’s Media Lab enlisted computer algorithms to help them create basil plants “likely more delicious than any you have ever tasted,” but the implications are more than Michelin-level pesto — the volatile compounds the scientists are manipulating provide both flavor and nutrients, and their discoveries could also enhance the plants’ disease-fighting qualities.
2. Like A Swiss Battery
A Swiss startup says it’s created a high-density lithium-ion battery that — if the claims are true — could enable an electric car to travel more than 600 miles on a single charge.
3. Bots Make Book
Those seeking more information on new-wave energy storage need look no further than the new book “Lithium-Ion Batteries,” a summary of the latest research that was “written,” as it were, by computer algorithm.
Read more about this week’s Coolest Things on Earth here.
— QUOTE OF THE DAY —
“Most companies are only just scratching the surface of realizing their data’s potential.”
Matt Wells, vice president of product management for GE Digital
Quote: GE Reports. Image: Getty Images.
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