February 25, 2020
CEO’S ANNUAL LETTER
This week GE chairman and CEO H. Lawrence Culp Jr. released his annual letter to shareholders. Taking the helm at GE in October 2018, Culp set two key priorities: improve GE’s financial position and strength its businesses. “Looking back at 2019,” he writes now, “I hope you see a GE that diligently addressed its most pressing issues with grit and reset its foundation to drive long-term profitable growth. While the impact of this work is only starting to become visible to our investors, I’m confident that the ‘game of inches’ we’re playing will become more evident through our results over time.”
Looking up: Getting it all done means embracing strategies like lean management, which is already transforming GE’s operations: A GE Aviation plant in Mississippi, for instance, was able to reduce losses by 60% by going lean. Culp lays out what progress looks like at GE business by business — heralding gains at Power, Renewable Energy, Aviation and Healthcare — while keeping an eye on the bigger picture, like the company’s commitment to helping customers reduce greenhouse gas emissions. “GE’s people rise to challenges like this in every corner of the world every hour of every day,” Culps writes. “Our leading technology, global network and exceptional team anchored in the service of others are the same strengths I shared with you in this letter last year. I’m confident in our future, even more now than a year ago, because of them.”
Read more here.
THERE’S AN APP FOR THAT
Anesthesia is a necessary component of surgery but it can pose risks to patients. Even proper ventilation can be hard on the lungs and incorrect ventilation — like supplying too much gas — can lead to complications. To get a handle on this challenge, GE Healthcare designed the Lung Protective Ventilation app, which leverages anonymized patient and device data from the past to help doctors adjust ventilation to achieve the best outcomes in the future. It’s just one part of Carestation Insights, a suite of applications that run in conjunction with GE’s Aisys CS2, a fully digital anesthesia machine, to crunch massive amounts of data — and improve patient care.
Doctors’ helper: Of course, the apps aren’t controlling the anesthesia process. But they give physicians invaluable insights into that process so that they can make informed decisions — and track their results over time. “We do not need difficult measurements, calculation or interpretation to find what to do,” said Dr. Jan Paul Mulier, a Belgian anesthesiologist. “We need simple methods, running in the background without any extra work, to verify that we are following the guidelines.” Several apps monitor thousands of points of data as Mulier goes about his work, such as how patients’ lungs are faring during surgery; another app keeps an eye on all anesthesia machines in the hospital, ensuring that the right equipment is available at the right time.
Learn more here about how Carestation Insight apps are helping docs do their jobs.
COOLEST THINGS ON EARTH ?
1. Bot’s Antibiotic
Researchers at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology used artificial intelligence to identify a molecule with powerful antibiotic properties — including against bacteria that’s otherwise resistant to antibiotic treatment.
2. Supercharging Electric Vehicles
AI and its algorithmic capabilities also helped Stanford scientists “supercharge” the process of battery development for electric vehicles.
3. A Fishy Development
Working with colleagues in China, researchers at UCLA developed a highly effective antifreeze coating inspired by the blood of fish species living in Antarctic waters.
Read more here about this week’s Coolest Things on Earth.
— QUOTE OF THE DAY —
“As we move forward with our lean transformation, we are not looking to simply ‘check the box.’ We are changing the way we run GE, business by business, every day, from the bottom up.”
— H. Lawrence Culp Jr., GE chairman and CEO
Quote: GE Reports. Image credit: GE.
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