Industrial Internet

• Report: Industrial Internet: Pushing the Boundaries of Minds and Machines. By Peter C. Evans and Marco Annunziata.

URL = http://files.gereports.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/11/ge-industrial-internet-vision-paper.pdf

Discussion

By STEVE LOHR”

“The origins of G.E.’s industrial Internet strategy date back to meetings at the company’s headquarters in Fairfield, Conn., in May 2009. In the depths of the financial crisis, Jeffrey R. Immelt, G.E.’s chief executive, met with his senior staff to discuss long-term growth opportunities. The industrial Internet, they decided, built on G.E.’s strength in research and could be leveraged across its varied industrial businesses, adding to the company’s revenue in services, which reached $42 billion last year.

Now G.E. is trying to rally support for its vision from industry partners, academics, venture capitalists and start-ups.

…

Today, G.E. is putting sensors on everything, be it a gas turbine or a hospital bed. The mission of the engineers in San Ramon is to design the software for gathering data, and the clever algorithms for sifting through it for cost savings and productivity gains. Across the industries it covers, G.E. estimates such efficiency opportunities at as much as $150 billion.

Some industrial Internet projects are already under way. First Wind, an owner and operator of 16 wind farms in America, is a G.E. customer for wind turbines. It has been experimenting with upgrades that add more sensors, controls and optimization software.

The new sensors measure temperature, wind speeds, location and pitch of the blades. They collect three to five times as much data as the sensors on turbines of a few years ago, said Paul Gaynor, chief executive of First Wind. The data is collected and analyzed by G.E. software, and the operation of each turbine can be tweaked for efficiency. For example, in very high winds, turbines across an entire farm are routinely shut down to prevent damage from rotating too fast. But more refined measurement of wind speeds might mean only a portion of the turbines need to be shut down. “ (http://www.nytimes.com/2012/11/24/technology/internet/ge-looks-to-industry-for-the-next-digital-disruption.html)

2. Kevin Carson:

‘Looks like another variant of greenwashed/cognitive capitalism as the basis of a new Kondratiev Wave or engine of accumulation.

It presupposes 1) integrating smart transportation/power/inventory management systems and an "internet of things" into the existing global corporate institutional framework, and 2) relying heavily on "cybersecurity" and strong IP law to enforce that institutional framework against the naturally decentralizing and deflationary tendency of network organization, in order 3) to enclose the network revolution within a hierarchical framework and preserve it as a source of rent for the existing power structure.

In short, it's an attempt at a Hail Mary pass to snatch victory from the jaws of defeat for transnational corporate capitalism, and coopt the potential of liberatory technologies into their dying system.” (email January 2013)