GE to build ‘Industrial Internet Centre of Excellence’ at IIT Madras

Manama : GE announced plans to set up an Industrial Internet Centre of Excellence at the Indian Institute of Technology Madras (IIT Madras), one of the foremost institutes in higher technological education, to develop the first of its kind digital solution that will serve the global aluminium smelter industry. 

The two entities will develop power intensive applications with the first focus on rolling out a Digital Twin of an Aluminium Smelter. GE’s dedicated teams in the Middle East will play an active role in the collaboration, leveraging their expertise of working with some of the world’s largest aluminium smelters in the UAE and Bahrain.

Aluminium smelters are essentially refineries for extracting aluminium from its oxide. The Twin is a living digital model that will continuously generate new data and insights about the smelter that allows operators to run the smelters more efficiently.  For the aluminium smelter industry, the net gains through such productivity enhancement are valued at between US$50 to 150 million annually.

The Centre marks a milestone global collaboration by GE to drive digital industrial transformation that can bring quantum leaps in productivity, efficiency and reliability to the industrial sector. 

Integrating heavy machinery with advanced software and analytics to create Digital Twins, the digital industrial solutions are powered by Predix, the world’s first and only cloud-based operating system built exclusively for industry. 

A mere 1 per cent increase in productivity through the application of Industrial Internet solutions can contribute to a 20 pc potential increase in performance for its customers.

Azeez Mohammed, President & CEO, GE Power Services, MEA, said, “The agreement with IIT Madras underlines our commitment to building industry-academia linkages to support digital industrial transformation. These digital solutions can be replicated at smelters across the world.”