Case Study: General Electric (GE) achieves major operational efficiency and cost savings with Kaggle

GE Tackles the Industrial Internet

Since 2012 GE has pursued an “Industrial Internet” strategy to connect smart machines and advanced analytics to solve real operational problems. To accelerate innovation, GE partnered with Kaggle to run three crowdsourced competitions (total prizes $600,000) addressing challenges from flight efficiency to hospital operations, tackling fast-changing flight dynamics and costly healthcare inefficiencies.

The competitions produced practical, measurable solutions: Flight Quest I improved arrival-time predictions by 40%—saving about five minutes per flight and an estimated $6.2M annually for a mid-sized airline—while Flight Quest II’s real‑time optimization delivered a 12% efficiency and cost improvement in simulator tests. Hospital Quest produced a referral management system that simplified discharge workflows and improved post-acute care quality, demonstrating the value of crowdsourced analytics for immediate operational gains.

GE