General Electric Co on Monday launched a digital division that it hopes will propel the US industrial conglomerate into the top ranks of the software industry.
As the company sheds financial assets to focus on its core industrial businesses, from making aircraft engines and home appliances to equipment for power grids, GE said it was “building the playbook for the new digital industrial world.”
The new GE Digital, harnessing all of its digital capabilities, will be led by chief digital officer Bill Ruh, GE’s software chief.
“As GE transforms itself to become the world’s premier digital industrial company, this will provide GE’s customers with the best industrial solutions and the software needed to solve real world problems,” GE chairman and chief executive Jeffrey Immelt said in a statement.
Immelt forecast the move will increase GE’s software and analytics business from US$6 billion this year “to a top 10 software company by 2020.”
The Fairfield, Connecticut-based global industrial giant has been shedding financial businesses as it aims to divest US100 billion in assets by the end of this year. With the sale last week of GE Capital’s transportation finance unit to Canada’s BMO Financial Group, the company said it had racked up about US$85 billion in sales so far this year.
As part of GE’s refocus on its industrial strength, Immelt engineered the purchase of French firm Alstom SA’s energy assets. The deal cleared the final antitrust regulatory hurdles on Tuesday last week in the EU and the US.
Also on Monday, GE announced several leadership changes. Mark Begor, the head of GE Energy Management, is retiring after 35 years with the company, and he will be succeeded by Russell Stokes, 44, an 18-year GE veteran who most recently led the transportation business.
Taking Stokes’s place as president and chief executive officer of transportation will be Jamie Miller, 47, senior vice president and chief information officer.
“All of our business leaders will be critical to our success as a digital industrial company and will help lead us through this generational change for GE,” Immelt said.
Taiwan Transport and Storage Corp (TTS, 台灣通運倉儲) yesterday unveiled its first electric tractor unit — manufactured by Volvo Trucks — in a ceremony in Taipei, and said the unit would soon be used to transport cement produced by Taiwan Cement Corp (TCC, 台灣水泥). Both TTS and TCC belong to TCC International Holdings Ltd (台泥國際集團). With the electric tractor unit, the Taipei-based cement firm would become the first in Taiwan to use electric vehicles to transport construction materials. TTS chairman Koo Kung-yi (辜公怡), Volvo Trucks vice president of sales and marketing Johan Selven, TCC president Roman Cheng (程耀輝) and Taikoo Motors Group
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