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Tag: GE

  • Toshiba Announces Plan to Split Into Three Companies

    Toshiba Announces Plan to Split Into Three Companies

    Toshiba is the latest company splitting up, with plans to split into three separate companies.

    Once one of the most influential tech companies, Toshiba has had a number of missteps, scandals, and general mismanagement over the last several years. The company is now splitting into three companies in an effort to respond faster to the growing challenges companies face.

    The separation allows each business to significantly increase its focus and facilitate more agile decision-making and leaner cost structures.

    The three separate business will be Infrastructure Service Co., Device Co and Toshiba, which will hold its shares in Kioxia Holdings Corporation (KHC) and Toshiba Tec Corporation. The company plans to complete the split by the second half of fiscal 2023.

    “Over our more than 140 year history, Toshiba has constantly evolved to stay ahead of the times,” said Satoshi Tsunakawa, Interim Chair, President and Chief Executive Officer of Toshiba. “Today’s announcement is no different. In order to enhance our competitive positioning, each business now needs greater flexibility to address its own market opportunities and challenges. We are convinced that the business separation is attractive and compelling: it will unlock immense value by removing complexity, it enables the businesses to have much more focused management, facilitating agile decision making, and the separation naturally enhances choices for shareholders. Our Board and management team firmly believe that this strategic reorganization is the right step for sustainable profitable growth of each business and the best path to create additional value for our stakeholders. We are grateful for the Strategic Review Committee’s thorough evaluation and recommendation on our best path forward.”

    Toshiba’s news comes on the heels of GE announcing it is splitting into three companies, roughly a year after IBM announced it would split in two.

  • GE Splitting Into Three Companies Focused on Separate Industries

    GE Splitting Into Three Companies Focused on Separate Industries

    GE has announced plans to split into three separate companies, each one focused on a distinct industry.

    GE is a true American success story, a company that traces its history to 1892 and one of history’s greatest inventors, Thomas Edison. The company has been a fixture of American business for over a century, evolving, diversifying, growing and, now, splitting.

    The company will split into GE Aviation and GE Healthcare. GE Power, GE Renewable Energy and GE Digital businesses will combine to form a third company. GE Healthcare will spin off in 2023 and GE Renewable Energy and Power in 2024.

    “At GE we have always taken immense pride in our purpose of building a world that works,” said GE Chairman and CEO H. Lawrence Culp, Jr. “The world demands—and deserves—we bring our best to solve the biggest challenges in flight, healthcare, and energy. By creating three industry-leading, global public companies, each can benefit from greater focus, tailored capital allocation, and strategic flexibility to drive long-term growth and value for customers, investors, and employees. We are putting our technology expertise, leadership, and global reach to work to better serve our customers.

    “Today is a defining moment for GE, and we are ready. Our teams have done exceptional work strengthening our financial position and operating performance, all while deepening our culture of continuous improvement and lean. And we’re not finished—we remain focused on continuing to reduce debt, improve our operational performance, and strategically deploy capital to drive sustainable, profitable growth. We have a responsibility to move with speed to shape the future of flight, deliver precision health, and lead the energy transition. The momentum we have built puts us in a position of strength to take this exciting next step in GE’s transformation and realize the full potential of each of our businesses.”

    Culp will remain CEO and chairman of GE through the spin-offs, ultimately remaining CEO GE Aviation once the process is complete.

  • GE Partners Uses Verizon 5G to Power Cross-Industry Testbed

    GE Partners Uses Verizon 5G to Power Cross-Industry Testbed

    GE Research and Verizon have partnered to power a cross-industry GE testbed with Verizon’s 5G Ultra Wideband.

    Verizon’s Ultra Wideband, also known as mmWave, is the fastest flavor of 5G. It offers revolutionary speed, measured in gigabits. This makes it ideal for data-intensive applications that require high speeds and low latency.

    GE’s testbed will tackle a range of industries, including wireless, remote patient monitoring, predictive maintenance of aircraft engines and real-time control of wind farms.

    “Together with Verizon, we are leading the way in innovating on 5G,” said Vic Abate, GE’s Chief Technology Officer. “It marks a pivotal moment for the industrial world, as we finally have a wireless network platform that delivers the speed, scale, reliability and flexibility to connect industrial devices in a truly transformative way.”

    “Verizon’s 5G platform capabilities provide the perfect testbed for GE’s research team to build the next-generation, real-time solutions that will transform every industry,” said Tami Erwin, CEO of Verizon Business. “There’s never been a more critical time to build the 21st century infrastructure built on mobility, broadband and cloud and our 5G sits right at the epicenter.”

  • Portable Air Conditioners Slightly Better Than Fans

    With summer temperatures rising, one might consider buying a portable air conditioning unit, to avoid the hassle of installing a window unit. Portable floor units are designed to draw in warm air, cool it, then push it outside via a hose that connects to a window.

    Though, Consumer Reports has found that the quite expensive technology is typically no better than a regular fan. Consumer Reports fashioned a room to test the cooling power of various portable floor units. The temperature outside the room was set at 90 degrees with 70 percent humidity. Each air conditioner in the room was set to cool at 75 degrees.

    Brands tested included Honeywell, Haier and Frigidaire. Prices ranged from $250 to more than $500, and an array of thermocouples placed around the room gauged the cooling power of each model.

    Bob Markovich of Consumer Reports commented, “none of these units, not even the biggest ones, could get our test chamber below 80 degrees, even after an hour and 40 minutes. Window air conditioners are much more effective, and they tend to cost less.” The test revealed that all of the units were struggling to keep room temperature at 80 degrees. The most expensive unit, the Honeywell which costs $550, was unable to cool the roughly 225 square foot test chamber. The Honeywell had promised to cool rooms up to 550 square feet.

    Here is a portable air conditioner unit installation video by Haier:

    It’s been theorized that portable air conditioning units don’t work well because negative pressure is created while conditioned air from inside the house is trying to push hot air through the vent leading outside. This actually forces more hot air into the house.

    Consumer Reports went on to test some standard window units, and found that two LG brand air conditioners worked best for large and medium sized rooms, at a price of $350 and $240 respectively. It was found that a $210 GE unit worked best for smaller rooms.

    Image via Youtube

  • Comcast Wants to Put Its Logo Atop 30 Rock in Attempt to Become Black Hole of American Hatred

    At 30 Rockefeller plaza stands one of New York City’s most recognizable skyscrapers. Hoisted atop the 70-story home of NBC offices and studios sits a giant GE logo.

    But you’d be more likely to hear the building called ’30 Rock’ or even the ‘RCA Building’ – the former due to its address, of course, and the latter due to its first and longtime tenant, the Radio Corporation of America. Whether you call it ’30 Rock’ or the ‘RCA Building’ is likely a matter of age.

    Either way, the famous tower may soon have a new name for people to ignore or speak with derision – The Comcast Building.

    The New York Times reports that Comcast, America’ most-beloved practitioner of the dark arts, has applied for a “certificate of appropriateness” from the city’s Landmarks Preservation Commission to take down the 24 foot-tall GE logo and replace is with a giant Comcast logo.

    Although the proposed Comcast logo would only stand 12 feet tall, its LED glow would likely be one of the most visible additions to the NYC skyline. Comcast has also proposed a 10 foot-tall NBC peacock logo to rest atop the Comcast sign. As you probably know, Comcast recently bought out GE’s 49 percent stake in NBCUniversal. Comcast owns you, and they want to make sure the whole world knows it.

    The move has already been approved by the local community board, so the Landmarks Preservation Commission is the last hurdle between NYC and a giant Comcast logo on one of its most iconic structures.

    Of course, it’s not like Comcast is trying to stick a 30-foot sign on top of the Empire State Building. 30 Rock has always had a giant corporate logo resting on its head – so in reality it would just amount to swapping the logo of one giant business for another.

    But we’re in a climate of Comcast hate right now. Insatiable, all-encompassing, demonic hatred, in fact. The type that eats at one’s soul and likely makes them a less-healthy person simply for harboring such ill will toward another. This shit is biblical. As regulators decide if they’re going to let Comcast acquire Time Warner Cable, surveys continue to award the two companies as the most hated in America.

    Comcast is #1, by the way.

    Image via Wikimedia Commons

  • GE Wants You To Improve Santa’s Sleigh With 3D Printers

    Christmas is just around the corner, and department stores are already ignoring Thanksgiving in favor of throwing Christmas decorations in your face. GE is getting into the spirit as well with a 3D printing challenge inspired by Santa’s sleigh.

    Over the weekend, GE announced the #3DPrintMyGift challenge, a call to designers around the world to design and 3D print a new and improved sleigh for Santa Claus. In essence, GE feels that Santa is a little behind on the times and needs a sleigh equipped with the latest technology to support his mission of delivering toys to children all over the world in just one night. That’s where you come in.

    Designers are invited to compete in a Santa sleigh design contest. The winning design will be 3D printed by GE and handed out as prizes for its #3DPrintMyGift holiday campaign. The company will also promote the winner’s name and design across its social media pages for the length of its holiday campaign.

    So, what kind of sleigh does GE want to see? Here’s the basic requirements:

    The winning sleigh must:

  • Provide STL version.
  • No variations of color in a single part.
  • Fit within 50mm x 50mm x 50mm.
  • Minimum wall thickness = 2mm.
  • Focus on Manufacture and production vision.
  • All other Requirements should be used as ways to push the bounds of 3D printing.

    • GE says designs must focus on both aesthetics and aerodynamics. In other words, designers must find ways to improve the sleigh design to reduce drag while making it look good. It also must remain lightweight so it can be hung on a tree.

    Even if you don’t win first place, you still have a chance to win some great prizes. For second and third place, Shapeways will send you a 3D print of your sleigh. You’ll also receive a GrabCAD shirt and notebook. For 4th through 10th place, you’ll receive a GrabCAD shirt and notebook.

    If you want to learn more about the design competition, check out the GE’s official challenge page. Make Santa proud with a 3D design of his sleigh and he might just thank you with a brand new MakerBot Replicator 2X this holiday season.

    [Image: Jazz Pants/YouTube]
    [h/t: 3ders]

  • GE Uses Vine To Complete The World’s Longest Apple Drop

    To help celebrate the recent #GravityDay throughout social media, GE enlisted the help of some gravity conscious Vine users. The idea behind the crowdsourced video was to capture the world’s longest apple drop on video, and the result is something Sir Isaac Newton would be proud of. For those of you who don’t get the significance of the apple dropping in relation to gravity, it’s time for a little reading. According to GE’s information, over 1000 Vine users responded to the company’s “casting call.”

    To give people an idea of these contributions, GE created an entertaining highlight video featuring, of course, a large number of the Vines that were submitted:


    After seeing that, I can’t be the only one that wants to see all of the apple drop Vines thrown together into one big compilation video. Surely not. Anyway, here’s the complete description for what it is you just watched:

    On September 8th, GE celebrated #GravityDay by calling on fans to help create the world’s longest Apple Drop on Vine. Over 1,000 people participated, grabbing apples and uploading Vines from around the globe. Check out this mix of some of our favorites, and watch bonus footage from the first ever Vine shoot in zero gravity at the end of the video.

    And yes, the zero gravity Vine video is worth the price of admission. In fact, zero gravity Vines should be standard operating procedure for all future missions where such conditions are encountered. The appeal of perpetual flotation is hard to resist.

    [Lead image courtesy]

  • Microsoft, GE Team To Change Healthcare Systems

    Microsoft, GE Team To Change Healthcare Systems

    Microsoft announced yesterday that it will partner with General Electric to form a new company aimed at improving the accessibility of healthcare information. The two hope to optimize the treatment that healthcare providers can offer patients while minimizing the cost often passed on to patients. In what is touted as the ideal combination of Microsoft’s innovation and expertise in developing software platforms with GE Healthcare’s experience in administrative and workflow solutions, their goal is to enable “healthcare professionals and organizations with the intelligence and capabilities to respond to the rapidly evolving and complex healthcare landscape.”

    Anything that can take the burden and frustration off of patients from the healthcare industry’s hardly navigable morass of bureaucracy and costliness is a welcome change. Building on existing offerings from both companies, Microsoft and GE believe that they can ultimately improve the quality of healthcare given to patients. Quoted from Microsoft’s press release, Jeffrey R. Immelt, chairman and CEO of GE, explained the goals of the partnership:

    The complementary nature of GE Healthcare’s and Microsoft’s individual expertise will drive new insights, solutions and efficiencies to further advance the two companies’ shared vision of a connected, patient-centric healthcare system. The global healthcare challenges of access, cost and quality of care delivery are creating a new focus on the performance and accountability of healthcare delivery systems — in every country, at every level of care. This venture will demonstrate what is possible when leading companies with complementary capabilities work together to meet a common goal.

    Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer added:

    High-quality, affordable healthcare is one of the biggest challenges facing every nation, but it’s also an area where technology can make a huge difference. Combining Microsoft’s open, interoperable health platforms and software expertise with GE’s experience and healthcare solutions will create exciting opportunities for patients and healthcare providers alike. Working together, GE and Microsoft can help make healthcare systems more intelligent and cost efficient while improving patient care.

    Some of the platforms planned by the joint venture is a software suite that will include Microsoft Amalga, Microsoft Vergence, Microsoft expreSSO, GE Healthcare eHealth, and GE Healthcare Qualibiria. The two companies hope that their endeavor will address many of the problems they have identified in the current healthcare system, such as healthcare associated infections and chronic disease management. Michael J. Simpson, current vice president and general manager of GE Healthcare IT, will serve as the company’s CEO. The two companies also project that the venture will produce job growth within its first five years of existence.

    Despite the fact that the new company has not yet been christened with a name, it is slated to launch sometime in the first half of 2012.