GE Digital (GE)

The world's 1st-ever Industrial Internet platform, Predix, becomes a pathway for revenue generation and notable new cost savings for Pitney Bowes' production mail business. An ordinary mail business, this is not. Of the 150 million pieces of mail produced each day in the US, the majority go through Pitney Bowes machines.

Since 1999, Marathon has been utilizing Asset Performance Management (APM) from Meridium (now acquired by GE Digital) for its day-to-day reliability needs across a number of its business units, and currently has over 1,300 APM users. After implementing SAP, Marathon found that the modules were deeply customized and difficult to adapt to the existing reliability program. As a result, Marathon began looking into how to improve its overall operational support

Petropriar, S.A., a subsidiary of Petróleos de Venezuela S.A., owns and operates oil and natural gas reserves in the country’s Orinoco Belt. Petropriar needed an easy way to manage the inspection of its rotating electrical and static equipment at one of its industrial complexes.

Tacoma Power, located in Tacoma, WA, serves 160,000 electric utility customers with nine hydro facilities on four rivers. The company’s generation automation team, consisting of three engineers and one engineering technician, is responsible for the integration, modernization. With a small staff responsible for overseeing a number of different environments, the company was looking to implement its HMI/SCADA system in a virtual environment for automation and control in order to optimize operations and reduce costs.

Waterford Township has been faced with losing a significant number of DPW staff, some with more than three decades of water and wastewater knowledge, to retirement. The company began to search for a solution that would like real-time operational data from its SCADA systems to its CMMS and DMS to create standard operating procedures and work orders automatically when conditions were met in defined workflow procedures. One key aspect of the project was to get operating procedures standardized and in a format where staff in the field, who might not be familiar with the system, could follow the necessary steps to correct the issue.

Dubai Aerospace Enterprise (DAE) was faced with the challenge of managing over 2 million records related to its $16B USD fleet of 425 advanced Boeing, ATR, and Airbus aircraft leased to more than 108 operators in 52 countries. The sheer volume of maintenance documentation, compliance, inspection audits, and lease transfers with airline customers was overwhelming. The data was siloed across multiple systems or locations, creating bottlenecks and inefficiencies, which impacted the delivery of information to customers. DAE had digitized part of its information, but the platform was outdated and discontinued in terms of future development and support. This meant more time and effort required to respond to customers with accurate information. Additionally, the security of hundreds of thousands of paper records was at risk in the event of a disaster such as a flood or fire.

Kahramaa, the sole transmission and distribution system owner and operator for the electricity and water sector in Qatar, had an ambitious business goal. They wanted to identify and prioritize maintenance and asset replacement based on risks related to the current condition of all electrical assets across their distribution substations. The challenge was to find a system that could provide consistent analytics for all assets, recommendations for action based on condition and risk, and provide comprehensive, fleet-wide reporting.

Cornell University, a leading learning institution in Ithaca, New York, maintains 260 major buildings on 745 contiguous acres. The campus consumes up to 35 megawatt (MW) capability to power the buildings. In an effort to conserve electricity and reduce greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions, Cornell sought a visualization and control system to monitor its operations and drive down operational costs. The university needed a system that could monitor and control major aspects of the campus facility operations, including lake source cooling, water filtration, and steam and power generation. The university also wanted to deliver real-time operational intelligence from across these facilities’ systems, enhancing the use of iFIX for campuswide monitoring and control.

A large American utility owner was experiencing a substantial increase in the penetration of distributed generation within three of the southern states that it served. The nature of renewable energy is volatile and during low load periods, feeders with high photovoltaic (PV) penetration could exhibit reverse power flows, potentially causing problems with protection systems. Intermittent solar production could also result in voltage swings, increasing the cycling of regulation equipment at feeders and distribution substations.

Mainova AG, one of the largest regional energy suppliers in Germany, was facing a challenge in the competitive landscape of cogeneration using gas fuel. In Germany, electricity sells on a daily basis and purchases are mainly driven by the price of fuel. Other less costly fuel sources, such as solar, wind, coal and nuclear take precedence, leading Mainova to take an innovative step to drive production efficiency. Mainova was interested in lowering its minimum part load, reducing fuel costs, and improving maximum power output — all while maintaining emissions compliance.

Bruce Power operates the world’s largest nuclear generating facility and provides Ontario, Canada with roughly 30% of its electricity. The company’s site in Tiverton, Ontario is home to eight CANDU reactors — each capable of producing up to 800 megawatts. With the nuclear power industry struggling to balance rapidly increasing demand with the costs and safety measures required to support an aging equipment base, Bruce Power identified scheduled maintenance activities as a source for efficiency gains — enabling increased availability. Specifically, the company had more scheduled maintenance activities than capacity, resulting in delays.

Owensboro Municipal Utilities (OMU), the largest municipal electric system in Kentucky, was facing a significant challenge concerning plant emissions. The Elmer Smith Power Station, with its two coal-fired boilers, was struggling to service its over 26,000 customer-owners with reliable electricity due to these emission issues. Additionally, OMU needed the flexibility to adapt effectively and economically to the rapidly changing energy landscape. The challenge was to find a solution that could reduce greenhouse gas emissions, improve heat rate, and offer more efficient maintenance options to reduce outages related to issues like tube ruptures.

The client, an enterprise-level B2B company providing financial services and mobile payment solutions, had two main goals for their Google Display Network (GDN) campaigns. The first goal was to drive incremental traffic for new user acquisition. The second goal was to scale the GDN program to grow the client’s user base while maintaining a profit margin of at least 30%. The challenge was to find the right balance between driving traffic and maintaining profitability.

RasGas, a Qatari joint stock company owned by Qatar Petroleum and ExxonMobil, is one of the world's premier integrated liquefied natural gas (LNG) enterprises. The company is focused on cost and value optimization to reduce overall expenditures and enhance efficiency by improving plant reliability and availability without compromising safety, health, and the environment. The LNG production at RasGas in Ras Laffan, Qatar, consists of seven LNG production trains with an approximate capacity of 37MM Tons a year. The company began an initiative in late 2014 with a pilot for early detection of equipment or system failures and production optimization for selected units of three LNG trains.

The diversification of today’s “food-on-demand” culture has led to an increasing need for keeping food products safe and fresh for extended periods of time—all while preserving its original flavor. Consumers expect their food products to maintain a relatively long shelf life without compromising quality. And as a result of this growing demand, Toray Plastics was faced with producing better food packaging film than ever before. Food packaging film is composed of very unique components for protecting against oxygen and water, and producing these films is no easy task. It requires very tight production processes that are examined with the utmost scrutiny to ensure the highest quality. So, in order for Toray Plastics to meet its vision to remove waste across the organization and remain competitive, the company implemented a new integrated system that allowed it to monitor its film manufacturing much more closely to ensure exact quality standards in every unit.

Platte River Power Authority, a not-for-profit wholesale electricity generation and transmission provider in Colorado, faced a challenge. The company's 668 MW Rawhide Energy Station consists of a primary coal-fired unit with four GE 7EA gas turbines as peaking and backup units. Additional power sources include coal, hydro, and wind. Platte River required a backup for its primary unit as well as a backup for any other operating sources. Additionally, they wanted a hedge against short-term market pricing fluctuations, while maintaining strict emissions controls.

The city of Haverhill, Massachusetts, operates both Water and Wastewater Divisions, providing drinking water to 58,000 residents and businesses, and producing two billion gallons of water on average each year. The facilities are 32-years-old, however, the control strategies they have in place today have put them well ahead of other facilities of similar size and operation. The Water Division is also responsible for monitoring, water maintenance, and water treatment, which includes protecting water resources. The city of Haverhill is currently supplied with water from Kenoza Lake, Millvale Reservoir, Round Pond, and Crystal Lake. The Wastewater Division maintains the wastewater treatment plant, which provides both primary and secondary treatment for the city’s wastewater. Within the Wastewater Division there are two groups—one monitoring wastewater collection, and the other overseeing wastewater treatment, which includes bringing water and routing wastewater into various facilities from multiple points across the city.

The Grommet, a product-launch platform, was facing a challenge in increasing membership signups. They were looking for ways to improve their Google Display Network (GDN) creatives using cross-channel findings. The company wanted to leverage the value propositions of The Grommet to provide browsers more reasons to sign up. They developed and highlighted a registration wall to show users that if they signed up, they would get coupons, daily updates on launches, and the ability to earn $10.

Salt River Project (SRP) provides generation, transmission and distribution services, as well as metering and billing services to over 1 million customers in the Phoenix metro area. They operate 12 power plants, including coal, nuclear, natural gas and renewable sources (hydroelectric, solar, wind, and geothermal). SRP was looking for a solution that would allow them to integrate data across multiple plants for outage management, to optimize maintenance strategies and to understand where production issues might occur next. They also wanted to identify opportunities to extend monitoring across their transmission and distribution-critical assets. With today’s complex business environment, increased public scrutiny and regulatory oversight, SRP wanted a smarter approach to sustained reliability for the most efficient power production possible. To obtain that level of availability, SRP needed a means to readily analyze the data of their generation assets in a cohesive and consolidated manner.

PSEG, one of the 10 largest electric companies in the U.S., was faced with the challenge of providing economic and reliable power as demand and fuel prices fluctuated. The company needed to maintain a profitable business with their existing power generation assets. At the same time, PSEG leadership recognized the value of leveraging data from their plants to make more informed decisions about operations and market opportunities.

A2A, the largest Italian multi-utility company, was faced with the challenge of modernizing their Chivasso power plants to become more responsive to changing grid demands and to boost productivity in a competitive market. The company needed to reopen the plant with compelling improvements to efficiency and a lower impact on the environment. Achieving the lowest emissions compliant load level was a critical success factor for A2A to compete successfully in the ancillary services market space, particularly in their location.

BC Hydro was faced with integrating data from two million smart meters and 30 network systems. As they began a smart meter roll-out, the leadership quickly recognized that without the right technology, it would face significant challenges integrating and analyzing such a large volume of data from so many different sources.

Panama Group, a power generation company based in India, was faced with the challenge of meeting India's Renewable Regulatory Fund (RRF) regulatory requirements. The company needed to determine the quality and resolution of weather data for forecast accuracy. However, they were dealing with unreliable site connectivity, which made it difficult to manage turbine data availability and gain closed-loop control. The challenge was to find a solution that could address these issues and help the company meet its regulatory requirements.