GE Looks to Create Big Data
A recent BusinessWeek article discussed GE’s entry into the Analytics space. GE is starting to put sensors on it industrial machines and building the capability to analyze that data.
As an example, the article’s opening paragraph mentions that a jet engine can collect a terabyte of data on one cross-country flight:
On Nov. 29, Jeff Immelt pulled out the really big iron.General Electric’s (GE) chief executive climbed up to take the stage at a modified film studio in San Francisco and stood next to a 6.87-ton jet engine built by his company. Inside this mass of twisted metal—Immelt told the spectators at the company’s Minds and Machines event—were 20 sensors that monitor the engine’s performance, generating part of the roughly 1 terabyte of information produced on a one-way, cross-country flight. In the years ahead, GE plans to analyze this information as it’s never been analyzed before in a quest to build smarter machines and more lucrative services that it can sell to customers.
The prize? With a 1% improvement, GE claims it can save its customers billions of dollars over a 15-year period.
This definitely fits the trend of firms putting sensors on various types of equipment to help drive improvements.
Course Info for Operations, Analytics, Statistics, and Optimization 
Good to see that a lot of companies are using analytics these days. It does truly lead to better decisions and provides a competitive advantage – of course I would feel that way because I do this for a living. But, heres a question for anyone. I work for a company that likes to describe their management style as fact-based. However, lately a lot of important decisions have been made very subjectively, even though we have very good analytic capabilities that could help. One thing that often gets thrown at me is “we can’t allow analysis paralysis.” An interesting comment given that many important decisions bypass data altogether. I want to throw these comments back and make a point – so, what is the opposite of “analysis paralysis.” I want to make the point that bypassing information and analysis can be dangerous and I want to do it with some flash. I went on-line and one person suggested that the opposite of analysis paralysis was “Utopia Myopia.” – Interesting, but not quite there. I have come up with my own “opposite” – “factual fantasies” where people just make it up as they go. Does anyone have a better alternative. I don’t think that Tom Peters did us any favors with his now famous term!