Report Shows Impact of Industrial Internet
This morning, General Electric (GE) released a new report that focused on the Industrial Internet, predictive analytics, robot/human interaction, and the effect that they all have on the workplace. What they found was that each had an overwhelmingly positive impact.
The report, titled “The Industrial Internet@Work,” was written by Marco Annunziata, GE Chief Economist, and Peter C. Evans, GE’s Director of Global Strategy and Analytics, and showed how the elements positively affected productivity, cut downtime in major industries, and even created new jobs.
It found that both time and money were wasted due to inefficiencies in how data was received, stored, accessed, and shared. However, as technology advances, new digital and software tools will assist in creating better ways to deal with this information.
“Gas turbine maintenance workers, for instance, do much of their service work on a set timetable and lack full real-time information about the condition of the turbine parts,” Annunziata said. “If they come too late and failure occurs, unplanned downtime can cascade across the system and affect the economy. A new, highly skilled workforce will emerge as the Industrial Internet unleashes a new standard in efficiency that saves entire industries billions of dollars in unplanned downtime and turns industrial operators into skilled information-workers.”
Working with machines will also benefit workers as the machines will be able to self-monitor and send information out as needed. Even something small like a handheld device would deliver valuable information to workers, such as an item that needs fixing. That same device could even share that information with others.
The report found that with the Industrial Internet, billions of dollars and millions and hours could both be saved. For example, in the aviation industry alone, 205 million man-hours a year could be saved, an estimated value of $10 billion. In the healthcare industry, four million hours could be saved, which is valued at $250 million.
It also found that new jobs could be created due to resulting economic growth. Jobs that don’t even exist yet would be invented due to the emergence of new technologies, and new opportunities would be created just from the need to manage the technologies introduced. Some examples that the report gives are jobs like user interface experts, business operations data analysts, and digital-mechanical engineers.
