Analysis of General Electric's Industrial Internet Project: Report

This report provides a comprehensive overview of General Electric's Industrial Internet project, examining its architecture and systems integration. It begins with an executive summary and table of contents, followed by an introduction that outlines the project's goals: connecting industrial machines, data, and the internet to improve efficiency and monitoring across GE's service sectors. The discussion section delves into conceptual, logical, and operational architectures, utilizing Enterprise Information Architecture Reference Architecture (EIA RA) patterns. The report includes various diagrams, such as System Context Diagrams, Architecture Overview Diagrams, Logical Architecture View Diagrams, Component Relationship Diagrams, Component Interaction Diagrams, and Logical Operational Model Diagrams, to illustrate the project's components and their interactions. The report concludes by emphasizing the importance of embracing new technologies like the Industrial Internet to benefit the company. The report also touches on the significance of GE's Predix software, which facilitates real-time data acquisition and analysis. Finally, the report provides a reference list of sources used.

ARCHITECTURE AND SYSTEMS INTEGRATION
Architecture and Systems Integration
Name of the Student
Name of the University
Author Note
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Executive Summary
The purpose of this report is to discuss the Industrial Internet project of General Electric.
This report contains different diagrams of logic models that would help prove that such a
project initiative is beneficial for the company. Accepting new technology is always hard and
this report provides enough evidence that this project should not be resisted but embraced.
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Table of Contents
Introduction..................................................................................................................4
Discussion.....................................................................................................................4
Conceptual Architecture...........................................................................................4
System Context Diagram......................................................................................4
Architecture Overview Diagram...........................................................................6
Logical Architecture..................................................................................................7
Logical Architecture View Diagram.......................................................................8
Component Model................................................................................................... 8
Component Relationship Diagram........................................................................9
Component Interaction Diagram........................................................................10
Operational Model................................................................................................. 10
Logical Operational Model Diagram...................................................................10
Conclusion..................................................................................................................13
Reference List.............................................................................................................14
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Introduction
The General Electric is an American based multinational company with its
headquarters in Boston, Massachusetts. The four sectors where the company primarily
provides services in are building, moving, curing and powering. The purpose of this report is
to provide an overview of the Industrial Internet project of General Electric that would
provide an interconnection between the machines used for industrial purposes, the data
collected over the course of daily operations and the Internet. The system must be adept at
providing connectivity and support for the industrial and product related applications, which
are used in the four service sectors of the company. The system must also be competent
enough to provide monitoring of remote system operations and even survive working
conditions that range from secure data environments to harsh operational conditions (MIT
Sloan Management Review. 2018). The report contains elaborations on Conceptual
Architecture, Component Model, Logical Architecture and Operation Model. These sections
provide details about the possible structure on Industrial internet by providing various
diagrams such as System Context Diagram, Architecture Overview Diagram, Logical
Architecture View Diagram, Component Relationship Diagram, Component Relationship
Diagram, Component Interaction Diagram and Logical Operational Model Diagram.
Discussion
The following section provides details about the Industrial Internet project of
General Electric and different diagrams that follow the patterns of Enterprise Information
Architecture Reference Architecture (EIA RA) (Giachetti, 2016).
Conceptual Architecture
Conceptual Architecture can be defined as a form of architecture that forms the
fundamental part of an organization. Conceptualism is utilized by the architecture where
the ideas and the concepts are far rooted into the architecture of the organization. This
particular design can be applied to obtain the overview of the scenario, which describes the
arrangements of the project related to Industrial Internet (Buede and Miller 2016). The
system context diagram and architecture overview diagram can best elaborate Conceptual
Architecture.
System Context Diagram
System Context Diagram can be defined as a tool to methodologically assess and
evaluate the shortcomings between different business operations. Events generated from
different external systems are generated from the system context diagrams and affects
every employee within an organization as well as external factors and systems. The
organization’s objectives and standards are well established and better understood through
this diagram, which helps in demonstrating the various segments of the organization.
Different business operations of General Electric are thus depicted with the help of the
following system context diagram.
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Figure 1: System Context Diagram for GE
(Source: Created by Author)
Data Warehouse
Every bit of information about an organization is stored in the data warehouse. The
employees and the management of General Electrics can access the data contained in the
warehouse for various business operations (Da Da Xu 2014).
Human Resources (HR)
The department of Human Resources is a vital part of any organization and helps in
employee management and different other tasks that are critical to the business of an
organization (Whetzel and Wheaton 2016). The different responsibilities of the HR
department include recruiting suitable people keeping the organization’s best interests in
mind. They are also responsible for the training of new employees and devising different
learning and development activities for the existing employees to improve productivity.
Supply Chain
The management of the supply chain has the responsibility to maintain records of
distributers and suppliers along with updating the stock details from time to time
(Christopher 2016). The stock management is needed to serve the clients of the company
and keep them happy as without information about the stock, the company might commit
to something that they cannot deliver.
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Products and Services
Different products and services are offered by general Electric and that information
is managed by the products and services system. Any detail or information of a new product
or service about to be launched into the market is maintained by this system (Goetsch and
Davis 2014). This system also oversees various plans for supply of products and their
distribution strategy.
Finance/Admin
The department of finance is responsible for generation, collection and management
of revenue. This department also develops different plans that boosts the overall revenue
growth and even provides market analysis to capture and target new as well as untapped
sectors of the market.
Customer
The customer base of an organization is the most important aspect as without them
the organization would cease to exist. The organization provides them with various products
and services as a part of the business operations, which generates revenue.
Architecture Overview Diagram
The Architecture Overview Diagram presents the basic building blocks that are
required to develop the Industrial Internet project General Electric. This diagram helps in
describing the most fundamental and functional capabilities of the business operations of
General Electric. The architecture overview diagram is highly customizable to suit the
interests of each organization and their business. To achieve the desired goal, there is some
need to define the needed capabilities for the project of General Electric
 Predix is a software developed by General Electric that serves as a tool for real-time
sensing and acquisition of data from different operational scenarios (Digital 2018).
 Enhanced analysis of the complete data that would help in development in the
project development process.
 Predictive and superior business analysis that would forecast the future market and
develop various business plans accordingly.
 The management and the entire customer base of General Electric needs to
understand the utilities and the importance of an Industrial Internet. This internet
would significantly help General Electric to connect all of its operations under a
single system for better information management, operation control and its
management.
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Figure 2: Architecture Overview Diagram
(Source: Created by the Author)
The diagram presented above helps in giving an overview of the proposed design for
the Industrial internet project.
The human resource department, the finance department and the data warehouse
are the three major parts of the diagram.
 The human resource department organizes goals and objectives for the General
electric project and helps the employees and the organization to get accustomed to
the new technology. Different aspects of the project are evaluated and this
department then deploys the required amount of work force.
 The finance department oversees the financial aspect of the project. This
department does the financial planning and the capital investment required for the
Industrial Internet project of General Electric (Ahmad and Brosio 2015). This
department oversees all the maintenance cost and the cost development cost.
 The transaction of data and information is maintained by the data warehouse (Stein
and Morrison 2014). Here, the data history is maintained along with ensuring
superior data quality and addition of value to business operations.
Logical Architecture
Logical Architecture is defined as the source of technical functionality that is
delivered as per the requirement of the business overview. The crucial parts of the
operation and their inter connections of different departments of GE are evaluated with the
help of this architecture.
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Logical Architecture View Diagram
This diagram helps in demonstrating the effectiveness of the value adding
necessities. These necessities associated with different end users and their requirements
that gives a suitable idea describing the overall operation procedures of General Electric and
their Industrial Internet project. The EDW or the Enterprise Data Warehouse is used by the
company and applied to the project for broadcasting and data input that constitutes of the
business knowledge. The department of Enterprise Architecture (EA) helps in determining
user requirements, creation along with evaluation of plans, defining the budget and
different collection of data related to the Industrial Internet project of General Electric.
Demonstrating and accomplishing the different goals as well as objectives of the workforce
is the responsibility of Enterprise Architecture. The financial department has the
responsibility to develop and implement financial strategies that would in turn help in help
in identifying annual revenue in terms of profit and loss and the various other costs
associated with production and operation. They analyse the major dangers and difficulties in
the implemented and existing financial strategies as well as the ones that will be developed
in the future. The products and services department organizes and develops various plans
for the supply and distribution of the products and services offered by General Electric
(Laudon and Laudon 2016). The following Logical Architecture View Diagram provides
detailed information on General Electric and various operations and associations.
Figure 3: Logical Architecture Overview Diagram
(Source: Created by Author)
Component Model
Component model fundamentally consists of the real components or parts, which
will promote and deliver different business operations and various functionality as depicted
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in the logical model below. The model primarily consists of naming and implementation of
different components along with its deploy and customization (Schwalbe, 2015). The related
important modules, their implementation, the software required and the various entity that
are vital to the project re shown in the diagram.
Component Relationship Diagram
The Component Relationship Diagram elaborates the different relationships between
the various components related to General Electric that would help in developing the
project for Industrial internet. The different components depicted in the diagram can be
used to understand the functionality and the system’s work process developed by the
developer of the system (Whittle and Myrick 2016). The diagram is the aggregation of the
logical view diagram and then architecture overview diagram that helps in providing the
connection between the different components of the system. The diagram assists in
developing the desired outcomes for the Industrial Internet project.
Figure 4: Component Relationship Diagram
(Source: Week 4 lecture slides)
Component Interaction Diagram
Component Interaction Diagram represents the vital sections of any organization. It
is shown as a pictorial representation, which can be utilized for different business purposes.
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The diagram is designed in such a way that it helps to depict in detail about the different
objects and entities within General Electric, which would help to develop the project for
Industrial Internet (Peppard and Ward 2016). The diagram shown below would help to
visualize the interaction between the various components that has been discussed above.
Figure 5: Component Interaction Diagram
(Source: Week 4 lecture slides)
Operational Model
The subsequent phase to that of a component model is the operational model. The
component model distributes the various components of the system upon different
geographically located nodes. This model can be further subcategorized into different
functional as well as non-functional models that help in producing a clear picture about the
different nodes that are distributed geographically. The requirements of the client is
considered as a top priority as the operational model serves as a conceptual model that
helps ion conveying the incentive process.
Logical Operational Model Diagram
Logical Operational Model Diagram provides a demonstration of the various
operational and business activities of General Electric that is of importance for the
development of the Industrial Internet project. The business methods and procedures are
explained by the multiple activities of operational origin that are connected to the expected
result with respect to the information gathered with the help of the Logical Operational
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diagram. The diagram shows the elaborated view of the operational activities that achieves
the required sales targets from the General Electric’s point of sales (Galliers and Leidner
2014). The business process can be made more effective and productive with the assistance
from a good amount of investment in the Enterprise Data Warehouse.
Three departments that play a major role on the business operations of the General
Electric and support the operational activities of organization are as follows:
 The department of finance concentrates on the financial aspects of the project. Their
functional role includes preparing budget pans for the project, develop cost effective
plans that would be effective without compromising quality.
 The department that manages the chain of supply focusses on developing plans to
cope with demands from the client and provides with the project’s status updates.
 The back office is a support department of General electric that helps in the
documentation process of vital information and concentrates on the promotion of
various developed business strategies.
Figure 6: Logical Operational Model Diagram of General Electric
(Source: Created by the Author)
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Figure 7: Logical Operational Model Diagram
(Source: Week 5 lecture slides)
The Logical Operational Model Diagram shown above provides diversified view of
the project application. Demonstration of various parts of the application are provided by
the operational activities. The various applications within each zone are connected through
Local Area Network and each of these zones are interconnected using Wide Area Network.
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Figure 8: Continuous Availability Pattern
(Source: Week 5 lecture slides)
Conclusion
Thus, it can be concluded that the investment by General Electric to develop their
Industrial internet would be fruitful, as free flow of information has always helped
businesses to grow. The various diagrams provided in the report would definitely the
organization help to transcend and adapt to the new technology.
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Reference List
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Chang, J.F., 2016. Business process management systems: strategy and implementation. CRC
Press.
Christopher, M., 2016. Logistics & supply chain management. Pearson UK.
Da Xu, L., 2014. Enterprise integration and information architecture. CRC Press.
Digital, G. 2018. Predix | Cloud-Based Platform for the Industrial Internet. [online] GE Digital.
Available at: https://www.ge.com/digital/predix [Accessed 7 Jan. 2018].
Galliers, R.D. and Leidner, D.E. eds., 2014. Strategic information management: challenges
and strategies in managing information systems. Routledge.
Giachetti, R.E., 2016. Design of enterprise systems: Theory, architecture, and methods. CRC
Press.
Goetsch, D.L. and Davis, S.B., 2014. Quality management for organizational excellence.
Upper Saddle River, NJ: pearson.
Laudon, K.C. and Laudon, J.P., 2016. Management information system. Pearson Education
India.
MIT Sloan Management Review. 2018. GE’s Big Bet on Data and Analytics. [online] Available
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Jan. 2018].
Peppard, J. and Ward, J., 2016. The strategic management of information systems: Building
a digital strategy. John Wiley & Sons.
Schwalbe, K., 2015. Information technology project management. Cengage Learning.
Stein, B. and Morrison, A., 2014. The enterprise data lake: Better integration and deeper
analytics. PwC Technology Forecast: Rethinking integration, 1, pp.1-9.
Whetzel, D.L. and Wheaton, G.R. eds., 2016. Applied measurement: industrial psychology in
human resources management. Routledge.
Whittle, R. and Myrick, C.B., 2016. Enterprise business architecture: The formal link between
strategy and results. CRC Press.
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