Digital Twins and AI Help Extract Maximum Value in the Industrial IoT As the Industrial Internet revolution comes closer to reality, GE's Narayanan is helping drive the creation of new value with market facing innovation at GE Global Research working with the GE businesses & customers.

It is essential for Indian industries to understand the worth of amalgamating Internet of Things and Artificial Intelligence together. This symbiotic mashup has a string of industrial advantages which should be explored, as India moves towards the next industrial revolution.

Entrepreneur spoke to Babu Narayanan, Senior Principal Scientist, Software & Analytics at General Electric on the benefits of integrating artificial intelligence with Internet of Things, in the industrial context.

When asked about the novelty of this phenomenon, Narayanan said that the concept of integration of AI and IoT in the industrial context is new throughout the world. "The Digital Twin is the foundational concept here – a continuously improving digital replica of a physical system that can predict future events and help optimize operations. We want to push the industry towards zero unplanned downtime & always optimized systems. In big industrial plants, a single day of downtime or savings of 1% of input cost is worth crores.

Just as industries in the US and Europe are now figuring out the large opportunities in this area, India too is on the threshold of a digital industrial revolution. Being very infrastructure hungry, getting the most out of a power plant – coal, gas, wind or solar, makes that much more sense in India. The same is true for other big infrastructure industries – aviation, refineries, rail, aluminium smelters, and more. And this is true for healthcare as well. We will also see rapid adoption in the context of Smart Cities. The beautiful thing is that Industrial IoT is aligned to both Make in India and Digital India – two key initiatives from our government.

Narayanan believes it is absolutely the biggest opportunity for the next wave of startups in India – the value proposition is crystal clear, we have the essential solution mindset, expertise in software as well as analytics in plenty, and a large population of domain engineers.

Invest in data houses immediately!

Narayanan, who was one of the key speakers at the Future of AI event organized by KStart Capital, said that companies that are implementing a data strategy are set up to use AI and IoT today. If the data house is not in order, we need to invest in it immediately.

Narayanan said that the integration of these two technologies is not restricted to large companies. Various business models will emerge – there is a clear move towards outcome based services where the upfront cost could be minimal in a pay for value model.

As the Industrial Internet revolution comes closer to reality, GE's Narayanan is helping drive the creation of new value with market facing innovation at GE Global Research working with the GE businesses & customers.

GE is building customer solutions using Digital Twins on top of its Predix platform – an open platform that already has attracted a large number of partners & developers. He adds, "It is truly exciting to be in the middle of this massive transformation that combines the physical and the digital and creates so much impact. It is very meaningful and satisfying".