GE Executive Joins Vuzix Board of Directors

1 June 2016 – Vuzix, a leading supplier of video eyewear and smart glasses products for consumer and enterprise markets, today announced that Paul Boris (above) has joined its board of directors.

"Paul's addition to the Vuzix Board of Directors supports our plans to grow our business and coincides with the launch of our next generation Smart Glasses products. He is a leader in his field and we are thrilled to welcome him to our board," said Vuzix Corporation's President and CEO Paul Travers.

Mr. Boris, currently Head of Manufacturing Industries for GE Digital, has driven digital transformation within industrial operations for decades. In the mid-90's, he led the trend of deployment of technology within manufacturing as a senior consultant with one of the world's largest manufacturing integration firms. He was the  force behind the Perfect Plant initiatives at SAP and as CIO of Advanced Manufacturing Strategy for GE, has focused on driving GE's innovative factory strategy to increase productivity and deliver asset and operations optimization. His extensive experience in driving industry initiatives and as a senior contributor at several Fortune 100 companies makes him an ideal candidate to join the Vuzix board.

"With Paul and the recent addition of another new member, Edward Kay, we have a strong advisory team to take us into the next phase of our company's development," Mr. Travers continued.

Source: Vuzix

GE and PTC Partner to Pursue Brilliant Factory Opportunity

The companies will bring to market a solution as part of GE’s Brilliant Manufacturing suite that leverages PTC’s ThingWorx® Industrial Internet of Things application enablement environment in GE’s manufacturing software portfolio.

29 September 2015 – GE (NYSE: GE) and PTC (NASDAQ: PTC) today announced that they are partnering to deliver an innovative manufacturing solution that will be available within GE’s Brilliant Manufacturing Suite. This new GE-branded manufacturing solution leverages the capabilities of PTC’s ThingWorx Industrial Internet of Things application enablement environment.

The result is an industry-hardened solution that features flexible dashboards and powerful data analytics integrated with GE’s software capabilities on the manufacturing plant floor.

The joint solution connects disparate systems – from the shop floor to the ERP – and offers a dashboard and differentiated user experience with consumer-like drag-and-drop capabilities tailored to each user’s role.

GE and PTC will align their respective global manufacturing sales and marketing teams to jointly pursue opportunities worldwide. As GE is one of the world’s largest manufacturing companies, the GE-PTC solution will be implemented within GE’s internal manufacturing plants as part of its Brilliant Factory initiative.

“The Brilliant Factory integrates engineering and manufacturing design, leverages data to run our factories much more productively, and optimizes the entire supply chain,” said Jamie Miller, GE CIO (above). “This solution gives us the ability to see that data clearly and easily in a format that makes critical decisions possible, so we can increase machine uptime and predict maintenance before it is needed.”

Leveraging PTC’s ThingWorx technology as part of GE’s Brilliant Manufacturing Suite provides robust manufacturing optimization capabilities coupled with:

• Role-based manufacturing dashboards with real-time manufacturing KPIs
• Standardized KPI models for all plants, connecting to heterogeneous system landscapes
• Collaboration, alerts, notifications and access to actionable data to make more informed decisions

“GE’s world class manufacturing plants have provided a testing ground for this technology,” said Kate Johnson, Chief Commercial Officer for GE Digital. “A united GE and PTC team is now poised to deliver a modular and robust solution to manufacturers badly in need of optimization through digitization.”

GE and PTC will also work together to certify ThingWorx for the Predix ecosystem.
”GE is a true pioneer in the use of technology to build advanced manufacturing facilities,” said Jim Heppelmann, president and CEO of PTC. “It is significant validation that such an industry leader has chosen to deploy our ThingWorx technology at scale. We look forward to collaborating with GE to deliver the promise of the Internet of Things to manufacturers around the globe.”

For more information, please visit http://www.ge.com/digital/partners/ptc.

Source: PTC

Wind River Delivers Real-Time Virtualisation for IoT Device Development

28 July 2015 – Wind River®, a global leader in delivering software for the Internet of Things (IoT), has announced a major update to its real-time virtualisation offering that allows customers to further reduce cost and innovate connected devices. The update includes storage virtualisation capabilities, enhanced security capabilities, and expanded processor support.

Virtualisation Profile for VxWorks® is based on Wind River virtualisation technology and extends the scalability capabilities of VxWorks by integrating a real-time embedded, Type 1 hypervisor into the core of the real-time operating system (RTOS). Through embedded virtualisation, it allows VxWorks customers to consolidate multiple disparate workloads on a single processor. Critical in today's era of IoT, it helps to address the need for robust, safer and more secure partitioning across all market segments.

“Virtualisation is a key attribute in GE’s global vision for industrial control systems in the era of the Industrial Internet. It allows the GE businesses to combine their real-time control logic, HMI, security, and cloud connectivity into a single platform,” said Wes Skeffington, principal engineer at GE. “Wind River’s virtualisation offering provides the right attributes like scalability, storage virtualisation, real-time behavior, virtual machine isolation, and security capabilities to realize this vision.”

Updates to Virtualization Profile for VxWorks include the following:

• Storage virtualisation through VirtIO allows devices to share a single storage controller, even a single disk, such as a Serial ATA device between multiple virtual machines (VMs), thereby dramatically reducing cost and complexity for consolidated systems. The run-time configuration, combined with support for the VirtIO device virtualisation framework makes the virtualisation profile a flexible and highly customizable virtualisation layer for embedded devices.
• Enhanced security capabilities include seamless integration with the Security Profile for VxWorks. These capabilities help customers to guard security from power-on all the way through VM load and beyond with secure boot, secure load, and data encryption during transmission and after shutdown.
• Expanded processor support includes support for Intel® Atom and Celeron architectures, providing even greater choices for customers to build product lines that scale from low end controllers to major gateways and high performance compute and display stations.

“Embedded virtualization allows customers to meet the challenges of the IoT era; it enables a future-proof architecture that can adapt and evolve to meet changing market requirements, customer needs, and technology advancements,” said Dinyar Dastoor, vice president and general manager of operating system platforms at Wind River (above). “With these latest virtualisation and security capability enhancements, Wind River has further strengthened VxWorks as the leading RTOS for IoT where connectivity, scalability and the ability to develop safer and more secure environments are paramount.”

The Virtualisation Profile for VxWorks is an integral part of the Intel Industrial Solutions System Consolidation Series, a production-ready, virtualisation software stack used for running an assortment of industrial and IoT workloads on a single platform.

More information about Virtualisation Profile for VxWorks is available at http://tinyurl.com/VxWorksVirtualization. And to learn more about how Wind River is addressing the opportunities and challenges of IoT, visit http://tinyurl.com/WindHelix.

About Wind River
Wind River, a wholly owned subsidiary of Intel Corporation (NASDAQ: INTC), is a global leader in delivering software for the Internet of Things. The company has been pioneering computing inside embedded devices since 1981, and its technology is found in more than 2 billion products. Wind River offers a comprehensive portfolio of solutions for addressing the system-level challenges and opportunities of IoT that is backed by world-class global professional services, award-winning customer support, and a broad partner ecosystem. Wind River delivers the software and expertise that enables the innovation and deployment of safe, secure, and reliable intelligent systems. To learn more, please visit www.windriver.com.

Source: Wind River

GE Unveils High-Speed Network for the Industrial Internet

16 July 2015 – GE today announced the installation of some of the world’s fastest, high-speed fiber optic lines to support the company’s Industrial Internet initiative. As a founding member of the Industrial Internet Consortium, GE software scientists and developers created an industry test bed that will transfer data at 100 gigabits per second to support seamless machine-2-machine communications and data transfer across connected control systems, big infrastructure products and manufacturing plants.

A typical Internet connection for home computers or mobile devices can transfer data at speeds of 15 megabits per second, or the equivalent one full quality, high-definition movie at a time. These speeds pale in comparison to the high-speed networking lines installed at GE’s Global Research Center that deliver speeds of 100 gigabits, or 100,000 megabits per second. That’s the equivalent of downloading not one, but more than 6,000 movies at a time.

While computer-processing speed has improved substantially over time, every user has experienced the long wait times of downloading large files on a home computer or mobile device. Downloads can sometimes take several minutes to complete. Imagine giving an industrial machine a command that has data sets with 1,000 times a standard movie file size. With the new 100 gigabit lines, industries can instantaneously connect and control machines located thousands of miles away. Through the Industrial Internet, GE is harnessing major advances in software, data analytics and now networking to connect people, data and machines in ways that take product development and services to the next level.

“A software research focus for GE has been to advance the real-time connections between large scale systems and to develop sophisticated control systems that increase the performance and efficiency of our products,” said Colin Parris, Vice President, GE Software Research (above). “These high-speed networking lines enable accelerated data movement and an increase in data volumes within Industrial Internet products and services. This ability will greatly accelerate needed advancements in these areas, and in collaboration with the Industrial Internet Consortium, help advance industry standards.”

The use of high-speed networking lines will be critical to helping GE rapidly transform its 400 manufacturing facilities into brilliant factories. For example, GE will now be able to connect to its manufacturing plants and have full visibility and control of the operation in the plant, which in turn makes them brilliant. This 100 Gb capability also extends to the wireless edge, allowing GE to provide more data and analytical results to mobile users through advanced communication techniques.

Industrial Internet Consortium member Cisco has also contributed expertise to building this project, as well as Internet2, which provides the infrastructure to give the network its national reach.

“As founding members of the IIC, Cisco and GE are collaboratively working on innovation test beds, reference architectures and standards infrastructure for Industrial Internet applications. GE's new fiber link and continued test beds are crucial to advancing our efforts around the Internet of Things and to our ability to rapidly generate valuable customer insights through our industry solutions,” said Cisco’s Tony Shakib, VP, IoE Vertical Solutions Group.

About GE Software
GE Software connects streams of machine data to powerful analytics, providing Industrial companies with valuable insights to manage assets and operations more efficiently. World-class talent and software capabilities driving big gains in productivity, availability and longevity. For more information, visit the website at www.gesoftware.com.

About GE Global Research
GE Global Research is the hub of technology development for all of GE’s businesses. Their scientists and engineers redefine what’s possible, drive growth for their businesses, and find answers to some of the world’s toughest problems. They innovate 24 hours a day, with sites in Niskayuna, New York; San Ramon, California; Bangalore, India; Shanghai, China; Munich, Germany; and Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. Visit GE Global Research on the web at www.geglobalresearch.com. Connect with the other technologists at www.geglobalresearch.com/blog and www.twitter.com/geresearch.

Source: Business Wire

GE Power & Water Wins Outage Services Work for DTE Energy Nuclear Power Plant

16 July 2015 – Michigan-based DTE Energy has awarded outage services work to GE Power & Water through GE Hitachi Nuclear Energy and GE Power Generation Services (PGS) for the utility’s Fermi 2 Nuclear Power Plant.

GEH will provide a host of outage and inspection services related to the boiling water nuclear reactor at the Fermi 2 plant in Newport, Michigan, while PGS will provide inspection and maintenance services to the main generator and six turbine valves. The services will be provided during an outage this Autumn.

“These awards are outstanding examples of the comprehensive, end-to-end solutions that GE Power & Water provides to nuclear power customers,” said Lance Hall, senior vice president, Nuclear Services and Fuels, GEH (above). “We’re pleased to strengthen our alliance with DTE Energy and look forward to bringing project management excellence, technical rigor, industry-leading performance and innovative technology solutions to the fall outage at Fermi 2.”

Fermi 2 is a 1,170-megawatt (MW) boiling water reactor that has been operating since 1988. The reactor has the capacity to provide clean, carbon-free electricity to more than 1 million homes. Global Nuclear Fuel, a GE-led joint venture, has provided fuel to the plant since the initial core load.

In addition to providing critical maintenance services to its existing unit, GEH also has partnered with DTE Energy in the new plant’s space. In April, the utility received approval from the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) for a license to construct and operate a GEH Economic Simplified Boiling Water Reactor (ESBWR) on the Fermi 2 plant site. Issuance of the license concluded a six-year process that examined the technical, safety and environmental aspects of the potential 1,500-MW unit. The license marked the first for an ESBWR and came on the heels of the reactor’s NRC certification in 2014.

About GE
GE imagines things others don’t, builds things others can’t and delivers outcomes that makes the world work better. GE brings together the physical and digital worlds in ways no other company can. In its labs and factories and on the ground with customers, GE is inventing the next industrial era to move, power, build and cure the world. For more information please visit www.ge.com.

About GE Power & Water
GE Power & Water provides customers with a broad array of power generation, energy delivery and water process technologies to solve their challenges locally. Power & Water works in all areas of the energy industry including renewable resources such as wind and solar; biogas and alternative fuels; and coal, oil, natural gas and nuclear energy. The business also develops advanced technologies to help solve the world’s most complex challenges related to water availability and quality. Power & Water’s six business units include Distributed Power, Nuclear Energy, Power Generation Products, Power Generation Services, Renewable Energy and Water & Process Technologies. Headquartered in Schenectady, N.Y., Power & Water is GE’s largest industrial business.

About GE Hitachi Nuclear Energy
Based in Wilmington, N.C., GE Hitachi Nuclear Energy (GEH) is one of the worlds-leading provider of advanced reactors and nuclear services. Established in June 2007, GEH is a global nuclear alliance created by GE and Hitachi to serve the global nuclear industry. The nuclear alliance executes a single, strategic vision to create a broader portfolio of solutions, expanding its capabilities for new reactor and service opportunities. The alliance offers customers around the world the technological leadership required to effectively enhance reactor performance, power output and safety.

Source: Business Wire