GE and PTC form broad strategic alliance for IoT initiatives in the manufacturing space

GE and PTC today announced that the two companies are partnering to deliver a new GE-branded manufacturing solution that combines the GE manufacturing portfolio with the capabilities of PTC’s ThingWorx Industrial Internet of Things application enablement environment.

The result is an industry-hardened solution that features flexible dashboards and powerful data analytics. Specifically, the joint solution connects to disparate systems – from the shop floor to the ERP – and offers a dashboard and differentiated user experience with consumer-like drag-and-drop capabilities tailored to each user’s role.

GE and PTC will align their respective global manufacturing sales and marketing teams to jointly pursue opportunities worldwide with a GE branded offering. As GE is one of the world’s largest manufacturing companies, the GE-PTC solution will be implemented within GE’s internal manufacturing plants as part of its Brilliant Factory initiative.

“The Brilliant Factory integrates engineering and manufacturing design, leverages data to run our factories much more productively, and optimizes the entire supply chain,” said Jamie Miller, GE CIO. “This solution gives us the ability to see that data clearly and easily in a format that makes critical decisions possible, so we can increase machine uptime and predict maintenance before it is needed.”

Leveraging PTC’s ThingWorx technology as part of GE’s Manufacturing portfolio, the joint solution provides robust manufacturing optimization capabilities, coupled with:

• Role-based manufacturing dashboards with real-time manufacturing KPIs
• Standardized KPI model for all plants, connecting to heterogeneous system landscapes
• Collaboration, alerts, notifications and access to actionable data to make better informed decisions

“GE’s world class manufacturing plants have provided a testing ground for this technology,” said Kate Johnson, GE Intelligent Platforms Software CEO.

“A united GE and PTC team are now poised to deliver a modular and robust solve to the manufacturers badly in need of optimization through digitization.”

PTC and GE will work together to certify ThingWorx for the Predix ecosystem. GE has a strong relationship with PTC. The two companies have previously collaborated on a joint effort to bring a solution that helps manufacturers close the loop between product design and production execution on the shop floor.

“GE is a true pioneer in the use of technology to build advanced manufacturing facilities,” said Jim Heppelmann, president and CEO of PTC. “It is significant validation that such an industry leader has chosen to deploy our ThingWorx technology at scale. We look forward to collaborating with GE to deliver the promise of the Internet of Things to manufacturers around the globe.”