Successful businesses are those that learn to adapt to the times. From its humble beginnings – Thomas Edison’s light bulb filaments, General Electric (GE) is now producing 3D parts for aircrafts and championing what many believe would be the next frontier, the internet of things. But no matter how things change, GE is defined by what it is; a company that makes the things that matter; a company that facilitates the transition from imagination to reality but it is the transition from “big iron to big data” that is making many take notice.
GE’s Chief Information officer for Sub Saharan Africa Abubakar Sulemana in describing the move from big iron to big data said ““For us at GE, the digital Industrial shift means we are turning information that we gather into productivity and helping our customers achieve better outcomes; this may be around asset performance management and operations and business optimization. It is making sure that as a company, we are leading that intersection of the physical and the analytical. It is all about how we use our digital assets to give value to respective customers across strategic infrastructural sectors – Power, Transportation, Healthcare as well as Oil and Gas”.
GE’s pioneering advocacy and concrete technological advancement in this regard clearly validate its increasing reputation as a bonafide Digital Industrial company – and GE customers are happier for it. For example, GE has deployed the On-site Monitor (OSM) on a number of industrial sites belonging to its customers. The OSM is used to collect information from industrial machines such as gas/steam turbines and provide data driven insights. These insights provide greater flexibility, efficiency and profitability to the customer in the critical areas of increased fuel efficiency and reduction in operational uncertainties.
From jet engines to gas turbines to health care imaging equipment – GE is connecting those machines with software so they can be responsive and predictive, delivering better results for customers.
The connection of units to the OSM is a pre-requisite to the industrial internet installation and for the OSM to be operational and facilitate data flow to the data centers, there is the critical need for high speed internet of up to 500Kbps per unit.
Digital Industrial Companies are the companies of the future because with technological advances customers need increased asset performance management software, which can provide them with answers on what equipment is most important, how it should be maintained and how unexpected failures can be avoided. This is what GE technology can provide today, deploying OSM devices to track equipment performance in remote locations.
While OSMs are a recent innovation in the industrial world, GE is already notching up positive testimonials and outcomes from Cabinda in Angola to the National Integrated Power Projects (NIPP) and Dangote cement plants in Nigeria.
In partnership with a company called AEnergia, GE launched a remote monitoring system for its Power infrastructure at the Malembo Power plant on Cabinda Island in Angola. With the use of a dedicated satellite connection GE is able to monitor its power assets in Cabinda Island in order to spot or predict abnormal conditions that help engineers and technicians at the power plant take proactive action to mitigate unplanned downtime. GE is also able to improve turbine reliability and performance at this power plant.
The Malembo power plant is the cornerstone of the power infrastructure in Cabinda Island. Most of the power infrastructure there is GE technology. They include 2 GE 6b machines and 1 TM2500 with a combined generation capacity of 96 mw.
The success story is the same for Dangote’s Obajana cement factory – Africa’s single largest cement factory with anannual production capacity of over 13 million tonnes. The Obajana plant is fully powered by four GE gas turbines that run on natural gas and diesel providing sustainable power for the business to meet its production targets. GE is also able to remotely monitor its power infrastructure in Dangote’s Obajana cement factory.
The President and CEO of GE Nigeria Dr Lazarus Angbazo also confirmed that a similarly remote monitoring and diagnosis of the GE gas turbines on the NIPP power plants has commenced across Nigeria in order to give diagnostic/preventive maintenance advice. GE has now started to collect data from the NIPP power plants and should in no distant future be able to share real time insights to the customer – The Niger Delta Power Holding Company (NDPHC).
Skeptics and pessimists about Africa’s potential for industrialization often point to poor maintenance culture as its bane but that may soon become a thing of the past as OSM’s become more diagnostic, and predictive – giving preventive maintenance advice that help machines work more efficiently. Who knows, the era of broken down refineries and moribund power plants that have become constant headlines in these parts may be over very soon.
For those concerned with security of customer data especially in an age of advanced industrial espionage, GE has ensured that the customer data is kept secure through the use of firewalls and several other security measures such as use of a VPN to access certain details. To ensure that high levels of industrial grade security are available to its customer at all times, GE had in 2014 acquired a leading IT security company called Wurldech.
With people, services, technology and scale, GE is clearly delivering better outcomes for customers by speaking the language of industry.
