Doha: GE yesterday 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.
The Industrial Internet Centre of Excellence 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 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, MEA, said: “The agreement with IIT Madras underlines our commitment to building industry-academia linkages to support digital industrial transformation. Digitisation is the future of industry, and our Industrial Internet solutions aim to enhance efficiency, reliability and productivity through proactive monitoring and diagnosis of the operational processes. The pioneering work in creating the Digital Twin of an Aluminium Smelter at the Centre, and the solutions co-created with the expertise of the IIT Madras faculty and researchers will support the industry to achieve cost savings and improved productivity. These digital solutions can be replicated at smelters across the world.”
Professor Bhaskar Ramamurthi, Director of IIT Madras, said: “This is a remarkable opportunity to work with GE’s global team of experts to develop path-breaking solutions for the smelter industry. GE is an ideal partner to this collaboration and its strong digital industrial capabilities will help achieve the desired results in enhancing the operational efficiency of the smelter industry. Our faculty and researchers have in-depth understanding of physics-based process modelling, and we will work with multi-sectoral experts at GE’s different offices around the world to innovate new solutions. We are delighted that the solutions co-created by IIT Madras and GE will have global application, thus adding to the reputation of our organisation.”
GE’s dedicated teams in the Middle East will also 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.
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