Introduction to GE’s Industrial Internet Project

This report is based on a multinational conglomerate General Electric (GE) that has put bet on Big Data and Analytics. The organization has decided to launch a new project “Industrial Internet” in which there will be convergence of industrial machines with data and Internet. The main objectives is to support connectivity between the various product applications being utilized by their four themes of operations. The organization mainly operates in the four themes such as Building, Curing, Moving and Powering (MIT Sloan Management Review 2016). Hence, the project has been undertaken by the company as a challenge to implement real-time monitoring as well as analytics on the pipelines or equipment of power generation remotely. There is a requirement of an enterprise system in the organization so that they can withstand the odds and also are capable of operating in environments that are most secure or data sensitive such as hospitals. In this report, the various models are developed for providing an information centric solution to implement the dynamic project of Industrial Internet. 

Predix offers creation of innovative applications for businesses with the help of which real time data on operations can be turned into actionable insights. In the above System Context Diagram, the system overview of Predix (Industrial Internet Platform) is illustrated to present the working procedure of Predix. Predix has everything that is required for easily building, secure deployment and effective operation of the industrial applications. This makes them in charge for supervising the journey to IoT implementation (Ge.com 2018). The system context diagram presents that there are overall three divisions in the Industrial Internet platform comprising of Connectivity, Cloud Services and Applications. The component connectivity involves Predix Machine software/Analytics and External Data of Enterprise Systems. Those are connected with the cloud services that are provided by the Predix cloud. The cloud services consists of the business logics along with Cloud Foundry and Data infrastructure. The third component is the User Interface on the client side or the Mobile Applications that are eventually connected to the cloud services. This means that the three components are inter related among them so that there is proper connectivity of first component area with the third component (Bahga and Madisetti 2016). Predix will encourage development, deployment and operation of industrial applications in the cloud within General Electric (GE) as it will facilitate secure connection between machines and data for people.

The above diagram illustrates the Architecture overview diagram to present the infrastructure of GE Company. The various layers being depicted in the above diagram represent that they play different roles in context to the organization. The first layer “Business Process Industry” reflects the industries that are being presently operated as business by the company. GE is a multinational conglomerate that operates in the fields such as Aviation, Transportation, Power Distribution, Healthcare, Oil and Gas, Water, Mining, manufacturing, Automotive, Wind, Power Generation and Intelligent Environments (Sadeghi, Wachsmann and Waidner 2015). This means that the company has already an influence over technological innovation as it has grasp in intelligent environments. The next layer represents the various application and optimization services that the organization has taken into consideration as below:

Overview of Predix Platform

Scheduling & Logistics: It relates to the increase in utilization of assets using predictive analytics, improvement in the performance along with efficiency that will turn into lowering of costs for repair.

Connected Products: It relates to replacing the existing “break-fix” model using the approach “predict-and prevent” services with the help of developing machines software defined (Wan et al. 2016).

Intelligent Environments: It associated with the using of LED solutions as well as sensors in cities and buildings for collection and analysis of data and enhancing the experience of everyone.

Field Force Management: This relates to giving the workers with machine data as well as expertise and processes that is required for more effective repairs and upgrades.

Industrial Analytics: This is associated with monitoring the asset health for identifying problems after that using predictive as well as prescriptive analytics for boosting of productivity (Menon, Karkkainen and Wuest 2017).

Asset Performance Management: It relates to achieving the new levels of performance, reliability along with availability throughout the life cycle of all assets.

Operations Optimization: The key insights can be used on an enterprise wide scale for resolving the operational issues and increasing efficiency. 

The framework and starting association of system organizations can routinely take 6 a year. Predix accessibility organizations can give same day order and provisioning. Joined with steady proactive checking backing, exploring, and modified business alerts, these organizations pass on a managed, secure, end to-end accessibility plan from the edge of a customer’s framework to the Predix cloud.

• Physical accessibility globally by methods for cell, settled or satellite frameworks through relationship with Tier-1 CSPs (IP QoS, Policing, Metering, ACL and NAT).
• Secure virtual private framework (VPN) between the edge assets and Predix cloud, ensuring data security and asset protection (Hossain and Muhammad 2016).
• Ability to direct and control the edge assets by giving remote access by methods for VNC, RDP, SSH, and HTTP.
• End-to-end watching and notices about the system between Predix cloud and edge assets.
• One-stop-shop charging and uncovering for all accessibility and IP organizations.
• A self-organization entryway.

An extremely overall present day arrange necessities to eat up and separate tremendous volumes of data by partner with a wide variety of machines, sensors, control systems, data sources, and contraptions (Dujovne et al. 2014). Predix can securely interface with machines whether old or new, GE or non-GE on a broad scale. Once related, data is gotten, secured, analyzed, and made open to the helpful people at the right time to engage the right decisions.

An outline is an adjusted and separated viewpoint of a subset of an IoT structure execution that is monotonous transversely finished various IoT systems, yet considering varieties. For example, an execution of the three-level case in a honest to goodness IoT structure does not evade diverse use of each tie, for instance, many events of the edge level and moreover many to-various relationship between instances of a level and instances of the accompanying level (Posada et al. 2015). Each level and its affiliations will at introduce be addressed only once in the illustration definition. The three-level outline contains edge, stage and project levels. These levels accept specific parts in dealing with the data streams and control streams drew in with usage works out.

System Context Diagram of Predix

The edge level accumulates data from the edge center points, using the region sort out. The building traits of this level, including the breadth of assignment, zone, organization scope and the possibility of the closeness sort out, move dependent upon the specific use cases. The stage level gets, methods and advances control charges from the project level to the edge level. It hardens shapes and looks at data streams from the edge level and distinctive levels. It gives organization abilities to devices and assets. It similarly offers non-region specific organizations, for instance, data request and examination (Al-Rubaye et al. 2017). The undertaking level realizes space specific applications, decision candidly strong systems and offers interfaces to end-customers including operation geniuses. The undertaking level gets data streams from the edge and stage level. It likewise issues control summons to the stage level and edge level. 

The Gateway plays a role as that of a smart conduit in between the cloud as well as other machines that provide connectivity to the assets with the help of varieties in IT or OT protocols. In the above diagram, it is reflected that the gateway will act as an intermediate platform for connecting the Prefix cloud with the help of IT/OT protocols so that operations can be carried out remotely.

The use of the controllers that are existing along with assets that are industrial and commercial which are being operated as stand alone can be connected with the cloud. This will facilitate the collection of data for analysis to better understand the current performance and increasing efficiency.

The deployment of intelligent sensors that are low cost upon or even near the assets will allow transmission of data directly or indirectly through a gateway to Predix.

The Predix asset advantage enables designers to make, store, and administer asset models that describe asset properties, and moreover different leveled associations (parent, tyke, companion, etc.) among assets and other showing segments. Asset models routinely use essential parts (Perera, Liu and Jayawardena 2015). For example, game plans support various ways to deal with recognize and check for assets, which can give a wealthier point of view of how the favorable circumstances live inside the business and who needs get to. Formats can be used to make the structures that portray the parts that make up an unreliable asset.

Predix data organizations give speedy access to data and favorable examination while restricting storing and enroll costs. It offers a safe, multi-residency show that joins mastermind level data separation and encoded key-organization capacities (Hao et al. 2015). It moreover supports the ability to interface with legitimate engines and tongues to convey and process the data. There are four key parts:

1. Relationship with the source: Connections are set up with GE and non-GE machine sensors, controllers, entrances, undertaking databases, understudies of history, level records, and cloud-based applications.
2. Data ingestion: Data is ingested from the source continuously, and by mass exchange. Work process contraptions empower the customer to recognize specific sources and to make default data streams for all or specific educational lists and data forms, including unstructured, semi-sorted out, and composed (Burmeister, Luttgens and Piller 2015). These mechanical assemblies speed the blueprint, testing, and period of code, making it less difficult to manage and screen clear, onetime assignments to mind boggling, advancing data synchronization wanders.
3. Pipeline setting up: The ingestion pipeline can successfully ingest colossal measures of data from an immense number of advantages. In any case, data can be messy, arrive in different associations, and start from various sources, all of which make running farsighted examination troublesome (Da Xu, He and Li 2014). Pipeline getting ready empowers the data to be changed over to the correct course of action with the objective that insightful examination and data showing ought to be conceivable constantly.
4. Data organization: Data ought to be secured in the correct data store, paying little mind to whether it be time course of action for machine sensor data, Binary Large Object (BLOB) (for example, MRI pictures), or a RDBMS. This licenses use of the data for both operational and intelligent purposes. 

Architecture Overview Diagram of GE Company

Conclusion

From the above discussions carried out along with the explanation of the diagrams being presented it can be concluded that the Industrial Internet will help the company to achieve excellence in performance and increased productivity. GE will be able to solve the major challenges faced in Oil and Gas Industry with the help of Predix platform which relates to integration of industrial machines with Internet so that those can be monitored remotely. There will be improvements in asset productivity as well as a real time monitoring of the entire operation can be achieved with the help of chosen platform. The integration of the industrial systems and adoption of proper measures will help to reduce the cost overheads incurred upon due to aging workforce. Predix will help to develop a platform for Industrial Internet so that the needs of the customer can be met in context to the business processes. The conceptual architecture demonstrates that there is a must requirement of implementing IoT to develop platform for Industrial Internet. In the logical architecture, it has been discussed that the logical connections within the industrial machines with data and internet have to be established properly. 

References

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