GE Digital Plant Software Updates Drive Continuous Improvement With Operations Optimization, Visibility And Closed-Loop Analytics

• New versions of GE Digital’s Plant Operations Software enable continuous improvement and Lean with robust Manufacturing Execution Systems (MES), HMI/SCADA, analytics and Industrial Data Management Solutions for Food & Beverage, Consumer Packaged Goods, Automotive, Aviation, Water / Wastewater, and others
• Designed for the modern industrial worker / engineer with fast time-to-solution, an intelligent User Interface (UI) and mobile worker enablement
• Reliable foundation with stable architecture and technology, Rapid Application Development (RAD) with Low Code / No Code, system interoperability, security and availability features
• Analysis and Analytics for Operations Optimization enables intelligent decision-making across the enterprise through Process Digital Twin Technology

GE Digital today unveiled the latest updates to its industry-leading digital plant software portfolio: Proficy Plant Applications, Proficy Operations Hub, Proficy Historian, and Proficy CSense. This mission-critical software accelerates digitization for industrial organizations by supporting the digital worker as part of infrastructure modernization, enterprise visibility and scalability, and continuous improvement of operations.

“Building from our rich heritage of technology, experience and deep, long-term customer partnerships, GE Digital has invested heavily to deliver new innovations such as a modern and mobile user experience; our single, seamless MES for process, discrete and mixed manufacturing environments; and instant upgrades across an enterprise,” said Richard Kenedi, General Manager Manufacturing and Digital Plant for GE Digital. “As one of the world’s largest manufacturers, GE understands the importance of a digital foundation for continuous improvement and Lean to bring truly transformative results to our business and our global manufacturing and digital plant customers.”

“The COVID-19 pandemic greatly accelerated the need for solutions that support the new normal, as social distancing, remote operations, and supply chain issues have completely upended plants and factories,” according to Craig Resnick, Vice President at ARC Advisory Group. “This requires deploying MES, HMI/SCADA, historian, and analytics solutions capable of visualizing operations, analyzing data, and optimizing production, then providing that smart information in real time to the appropriate personnel regardless of their location so they can respond quickly and correctly without any detriment to performance.

GE Digital’s software upgrades address these new normal requirements directly and will help to further enable organizations to deploy their new digital workforce.”

Key developments
Proficy Plant Applications is the industry’s first Manufacturing Execution System (MES) that seamlessly spans process, discrete and mixed manufacturing environments, allowing manufacturers to efficiently deploy one MES across their enterprise rather than multiple, disparate solutions – reducing costs and time while increasing consistency and collaboration. Based on 25+ years of development, this proven MES maximizes overall equipment effectiveness (OEE), improves production scheduling, and ensures product quality by leveraging real-time production data.

New features in Version 8.1 include:

• Core process, discrete, and mixed manufacturing enhancements such as loT-based discrete work order execution, non-conformance tracking, and in-process work order editor
• Instantaneous upgrades with Docker containerization technology
• Expanded native HTML5 content to include Production Schedule for executing process orders and Waste Management

“Proficy Plant Applications 8.1 is taking us to the next phase of our migration to a single shop floor MES,” said Robert Amos, Senior Director, Technical Product Management for GE Aviation. “We are currently setting up the integration to our Oracle ERP which will make this a truly enterprise application. Key features like the expanded Non-Conformance capabilities will allow us to further consolidate our quality applications, which in turn allows us to achieve our goal of minimizing the number of applications on the shop floor. In addition, the continued evolution and new web displays will allow our shop floor employees to work more efficiently and with better quality in their jobs. We are in the middle of a complete redesign of our Supply Chain to modernize our platforms and consolidate those applications, and Proficy Plant Applications will be a pillar in that system.”

Proficy Operations Hub, a modern centralized environment for rapidly building industrial applications for mobile and Web-based intelligence, allows organizations to gain a foundation for insights into operations and productivity, supporting Lean and other continuous improvement initiatives. New features include:

• Real-time workflow task lists on assets with context and scalability, performance and security enhancements
• Faster, low code / no code implementation and quick time to value
• Advanced Historian Trend Analysis app for data analysis in asset model context
• Seamless integration of Proficy Plant Applications content
• Support for English, Chinese, Japanese, Korean, Spanish, German, Russian and Czech

Proficy Historian provides best-in-class industrial time-series and Alarm & Events data collection for onpremise and cloud-based storage and analysis. Updates in the new version 8.1 include Remote Collector Management for large, enterprise-distributed system management and reduced costs with Historian ETL (Extract, Transfer, Load) for sophisticated file-oriented data transmission for Enterprise Historian. Additionally, GE Digital released Proficy Historian for Linux Version 2.3 for improved data collection at edge devices, delivering distributed data management to support IoT.

Proficy CSense improves asset and process performance by uniquely providing five analytics capabilities in one closed-loop software solution: analysis, monitoring, prediction, simulation, and optimization and control of setpoints. Used around the world, this industrial analytics software turns raw data into realtime value with a Process Digital Twin. Proficy CSense provides AI and machine learning to enable process engineers to combine data across industrial data sources and rapidly identify problems, discover root causes, predict future performance, and automate actions to continuously improve quality, utilization, productivity, and delivery. The new version 7.0 allows engineers to analyze larger datasets with increased memory limitations, and features improved connectivity, model predictive control, interoperability, and security

GE Digital’s industrial plant software solutions are generally available. More information can be found here (https://www.ge.com/digital/).