A partnership with Visionaize adds 3D digital twins to operational use cases, and a new Accelerator product line
speeds time to value for its asset performance software in energy industries.
The energy industry is well on its way to digital transformation, and GE Digital is positioning itself as a technology
supplier that can help accelerate an oil and gas manufacturer’s digital journey as well as their time to value for new
applications.
To that end, GE Digital made three announcements during the ARC Industry Forum in Orlando in June, including a
partnership with a 3D digital twin software provider; the announcement of the new Accelerator product line designed
to quickly configure its Asset Performance Management (APM) software; and the news that GE Digital has achieved
Amazon Web Services (AWS) Energy Competency status, which recognizes GE Digital’s ability to help the energy
industry prepare for a lower carbon future.
First, GE Digital has formed a partnership with 3D digital twin provider Visionaize that brings high accuracy
visualization capabilities to operational use cases as a way to save time, reduce cost, and improve safety, the
company said. Visionaize’s V-Suite Starter can be incorporated into GE Digital’s APM Mechanical Integrity software
designed to streamline maintenance activities and improve worker efficiency across asset intensive industries.
While industrial companies can choose to review data and information in any number of formats including plant
blueprints, piping and instrumentation diagrams (P&ID), and isometrics through CAD/CAM software, V-Suite Starter
allows users to view real-time and historical asset data on the 3D model to deliver timely and valuable insights at
the point of action. The 3D visualizations of key asset information combine “see it, model it, and understand future
behavior.”
Visionaize integrates 3D plant models with APM Mechanical Integrity to provide data-driven visualization of key
attributes by color coding the model to filter out noise and focus on what matters most. It dynamically visualizes and
contextualizes data for operations and maintenance activities to help asset-intensive companies solve challenges
associated with downtime, quicker time to resolution, maintenance costs, and workforce productivity, the company
said.
In a separate announcement, GE Digital announced the launch of its Accelerator tools which will fast track the time it
takes to leverage predictive analytics, asset health and reliability processes, asset strategy optimization, and
change management workflows without custom development.
GE Digital’s first set of Accelerators includes an extensive library of predictive analytics, asset management
strategies, and standard health and reliability processes. Using advanced pre-built product configurations,
companies can efficiently set up enterprise-level asset reliability and performance programs, embedding prioritized
actionable information into daily work. In addition, they are designed to scale the power of APM with health
monitors, analytics, asset maintenance strategies, and business process workflows.
In addition to GE Digital’s own asset library, the company has partnered with Stork, an asset performance
improvement provider, to offer their Asset Strategy Library (ASL,) delivering a collection of pre-defined strategy
templates for known failure modes and prescribed mitigating actions for a wide variety of asset types including
Balance of Plant (BoP).
“Energy companies have used asset management practices for decades, but today’s operating environment requires
that they extend that to even more assets in the plant,” said Tracy Swartzendruber, GE Digital’s VP of marketing for
power generation and oil & gas during a press conference. “Accelerators help energy companies expand processes
without consuming more time and more resources required on custom configurations.”
Swartzendruber went on to liken Accelerators to the game Minecraft where players can build and create anything.
Over time, to avoid custom coding, the game began to productize different textures and sounds, for example, that
could be easily applied. “That’s Accelerators. GE Digital deploys so many APM instances and we keep seeing the
same things that people need… why not package these things up? They can still customize it, but we give them the
head start.”
Lastly, GE Digital’s AWS Competency status was a result of a rigorous technical validation process, including a
customer reference audit, resulting in a demonstration of GE Digital’s deep expertise of AWS to build, implement,
and integrate technology—using its APM software for power generation and oil & gas—that transforms complex
business and operational systems in a way that can accelerate energy and digital transitions.
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