John Ford, director of GE Hungary Digital Hub - Industrial Internet connects machines and enhances productivity

(John Ford) Company General Electric opened one of its six global Digital Hubs in Hungary at the beginning of October 2016. There are many reasons why we chose Budapest to be our only global hub located in Europe, and one of them is the perfect geographical position of Hungary, which is halfway between the US and India. That means, as well as close proximity to all our European business locations, also a lot of overlap in working hours, which leads to increased interaction and efficiency.

This is how John Ford, director of GE Hungary Digital Hub, in an interview for eKapija explains the choice of location for a global center of GE. He added that Hungary also has a very developed area of the digital industry, given the fact that its current share of the gross domestic product (GDP) of the country, about 20%, which is one of the largest proportions in Europe.

- Hungary has been a full member of the European Union for more than 10 years and GE has been operating in Hungary for over 27 years and currently is one of the largest companies in Hungary, running 12 factories, 5 research & development centers and 3 business service centers in 13 cities and employing more than 12.500 people. There is a good proximity to all GE businesses as the HUB is co-located with Global Ops (over 2000 employees) and Healthcare SW CoE (over 250 employees) – says Ford.

eKapija: What was the total value of the investment and how many people will be employed in new Digital Hub?

- The investment was approximately 30 million USD. GE Digital already supports 1.000 IT Hungarian experts from the various GE businesses operating across the country, we will, however, need an additional 300–400 IT experts to increase our digital capabilities. Nevertheless, it is important to note that our recruitment process will focus on the quality rather than the quantity of candidates. The team at the Hungarian Hub will focus on developing applications for Predix, a platform built by GE for the industrial internet.

eKapija: GE Digital might also be looking for employees in our country as well. Which profiles of experts are most sought after?

- We are always on the lookout for good talent to support the significant recruitment in key areas that will help drive the growth of GE Digital’s European hub. We need junior talents as well as experienced seniors who would like to work with enterprise business process software, Next Gen infrastructure, Data Analytics and Software development (java, javascript, .net), working in agile scrum teams. It also includes mentors and technical project managers.

eKapija: New GE Digital Hub will be in charge for solutions within the Industrial Internet. What can we expect form this revolutionary concept, which is in your company’s focus?

- The Hub will be responsible for software development, business processes and application resiliency, building and running infrastructure and offering access to big data solutions, and the key is Predix - the world’s first and only industrial-grade cloud platform built for the industrial world, launched by GE in February 2016. Predix is leveraging on big data analytics and helps GE customers across the power generation, power distribution, healthcare, automotive, chemical, transportation, oil and gas and manufacturing industries to increase efficiency of their high value assets.

Leveraging our industrial operation system (the Predix IoT platform) we will connect machines through re-usable horizontal products, in order to drive industrial outcomes such as next-level productivity across our digital thread.

eKapija: What is the role of Predix platform in transformation of GE?

- Predix is really the key to our success. It's a platform for building applications that connect to industrial assets, collect and analyze data, and deliver real-time insights for optimizing industrial infrastructure and operations within GE as well as for our clients.

eKapija: Digitalization and so called 4th industrial revolution has significantly impacted the changes in how the business is being done, and GE intends to become one of the biggest digital software companies globally, by 2020. Where is GE at this point of time and what are your next steps?

- Our 124 year-old company is on its way to transform from a traditional industrial company – manufacturing machines and equipment – to a digital industrial company, thus increasing its revenue out of the Digital Industry by 6 billion to 15 billion USD by the end of 2017, whilst also driving significant internal productivity gains.

To achieve our goals we have gathered together some of the best people in the IT and digital world, some of the top data scientists globally, some great minds connecting minds and machines. So we have got good people working here on interesting projects - generating power, making water clean, saving patients’ lives all through applying digital technology.

GE has created the operating system for the industrial internet (Predix) and built up a significant resource base for digital development and data engineering. The next steps for GE Digital in Hungary is to expand these capabilities through the acquisition of the best talent in the region and to continue delivering value, both internally to GE and externally to our digital customers, by connecting physical equipment, developing digital twins and driving value across the digital thread – says John Ford, director of GE Hungary Digital Hub, in an interview for eKapija.

Marko Andrejic

GE Hungary Digital Hub

General Electric Company SAD

GE Healthcare doo Novi Beograd

General Electric International Beograd