Huawei and GE Digital are partnering to jointly launch their industrial cloud-based predictive maintenance solution.
In an interview with Robotics and Automation News, Catherine Du, Huawei’s director of marketing, said the company is looking to increase its share of the nascent but fast-growing sector of business.
“Huawei is one of the leading ICT vendors,” said Du. “We supply a wide range of technologies to the market, from Big Data to IoT, so we feel that now is the right time for us to reach out to the industrial space and build new partnerships.”
And although Huawei’s current focus is on the industrial market, the company is looking to promote its brand globally going forward, in the wider business-to-business market and in the consumer space, says Du.
Huawei is a Chinese multinational employing approximately 180,000 employees, and has an turnover of more than $75 billion.
It is one of the largest networking and telecommunications suppliers in the world, and mostly operates in the business-to-business space.
The new industrial solution seamlessly integrates Huawei’s Edge Computing IoT (EC-IoT) with GE’s cloud platform Predix to enable rapid end-to-end connectivity between industrial assets and cloud applications, allowing real-time machine health monitoring, data analysis and perception, and smart maintenance decision-making.
In the digital industrial era, the solution helps manufacturers reduce maintenance costs and prevent unplanned asset downtime, as well as drive innovation in products and services.
Commenting on the collaboration, Diana Yuan, president of marketing and solution sales department of Huawei Enterprise Business Group, says: “The digital industry era not only brings development opportunities for traditional industries, but also creates challenges with interconnectivity between numerous devices, Big Data computing, and intelligent applications.
“Huawei collaborates with partners to explore the industrial Internet field and address these challenges based on our experience in digital transformation and leading ICT technology.
“As Fortune Global 500 corporations, Huawei and GE have leveraged our vast research and innovation capabilities to develop a powerful solution that helps industrial customers unleash new levels of asset performance, optimize service operations, and become more competitive.
“In the future, Huawei and GE will jointly accelerate the deployment of cloud-based industrial digitalized applications to enable the digital transformation of industries.”
Harel Kodesh, CTO of GE Digital, says: “The growth of the industrial internet depends on the cultivation of an ecosystem and a commitment to jointly build solutions to accelerate digital transformation for industry.
“This new solution brings together the strengths of two great companies – Huawei and GE – and is already driving positive outcomes for innovation-driven customers like Schindler. These partnerships will help industrial companies take advantage of the Industrial Internet and drive unprecedented gains in productivity.”
Huawei and GE announced their strategic partnership in July 2016 and this joint solution is the latest achievement in their co-operation in the industrial IoT field.
The solution integrates Huawei’s EC-IoT gateways and Agile Controller, GE’s Predix platform, other partners’ sensors and controllers, and industrial applications to construct information channels between industrial networks and an interconnection platform.
The Huawei industrial predictive maintenance solution will be adopted by Schindler, a world-leading elevator and escalator provider. The company says the solution will help Schindler centrally connect and manage its millions of elevators worldwide, significantly reducing equipment maintenance costs, and improving service reliability, benefiting billions of people around the world, every day.
Michael Nilles, chief digital officer, Schindler: “Using innovate technologies and our industry expertise we have built Schindler Ahead, the digital industrial platform for smart urban mobility. The partnership with Huawei and its leading connectivity solutions allow us to scale fast and innovate at highest pace for our customers and passengers.”
