GE ties up with IIT-M to set up Industrial Internet Centre

Unit will develop applications, such as the Digital Twin of an aluminium smelter, which will help the industry save up to $150 mn

US-based conglomerate GE has signed an agreement with the Indian Institute of Technology, Madras (IIT Madras), to set up an Industrial Internet Centre of Excellence. The Centre is being established to develop applications that will help companies save costs. The first of these will be the Digital Twin of an aluminium smelter.

Digital twins are digital replicas of physical smelters, from whom they collect data to analyse and support maintenance of the actual facility. One of the biggest challenges that aluminium smelters face worldwide, is high maintenance cost.

According to senior company officials, GE would invest around Rs three crore in the first six months and could commit around Rs 30 crore over five years depending upon the outcome.

Aluminium smelters are refineries for extracting the metal from aluminium oxide, separating it from oxygen through a chemical reaction. Through the new Centre, GE and IIT Madras will create the Digital Twin of a smelter, a living digital model that will continuously generate new data and insights about the smelter that allows operators to run the smelters more efficiently.

The net gains for the aluminium smelter industry through such productivity enhancement are valued at between $50-150 million annually.

"A mere one percent increase in productivity through the application of Industrial Internet solutions can contribute to a 20 percent potential increase in performance for its customers," Azeez Mohammed, president & CEO, GE Power Services, Middle East & Africa. The solutions will be powered by Predix, GE's cloud-based operating system built exclusively for industry.

The tie up will also reduce the time taken to start implementation. While it would have taken several years to build the system inhouse, the collaboration will help the company to start installation by November, said Mohammed. He added that the collaboration is envisaged for a long term, under which the researchers will keep on adding value to the technology, which the company will update on cloud to serve their clients.

Researchers and students will work closely with the GE Global Research, GE Power Services Engineering and GE Digital teams at GE's John F. Welch Technology Centre in Bengaluru.

"We want to prepare a new generation of students who have expertise in multidisciplines," said Bhaskar Ramamurthi, Director of IIT Madras. A parallel track is in progress in the insitution where a new stream of education and training is being created, which include industrial internet, which is the use of internet of things for industry and data analytics, he added.

GE will combine the data from various sensors with the Physics-based understanding of the various processes. Using Artificial Intelligence technology, the centre will create a self-tuning live model of the smelter. This Digital Twin of the smelter will serve as the foundation for various applications that contribute to enhancing the efficiency, productivity and reliability of the smelting process and the power plants.

These solutions will be developed using GE's Predix Industrial Internet operating system and Predix APM (Asset Performance Management), which optimises machines and operations to maximise business performance through three core capabilities - Machine and Equipment Health, Reliability Management, and Maintenance Optimisation. Globally, electricity accounts for nearly 38 percent of the cost of aluminium production, said the company.