GE’s connected dishwashers have become self sufficient and it marks the beginning of the disruption of two industries

Disruption is sometimes subtle.

Sometimes you miss it and then, at some point you wonder what happened to your sales. Then you kick your innovation teams into overdrive and then you realise it’s already too late. GE’s new product – as unlikely as you think it is – is one of those examples of disruption in action. Blink and you’ll miss it. Blink and your company could loose hundreds of millions of dollars worth of sales.

The GE connected dishwasher is the first sign of a new technology trend – call it Connected Home, call it IoE, whatever – that has the potential to disrupt both the retail and financial services industries – an example of which I highlighted a few months ago.

I’ll paint the picture for you.

In the past you, the consumer, would have the choice to buy where you bought your replacement goods from but now more and more connected appliances are doing that for you. So, in the past where you might have bought detergent from Walmart or Tesco now your connected appliances are buying them automatically from Amazon – or wherever else they, or the manufacturer choose – depending on the partnerships that companies, like GE, for example, have forged.

The above is an example of what I call a control point – now imagine the above scaled up to a point where every connected appliance is connected to the blockchain, where they can form consortiums and drive bargains for bulk purchases and suddenly noone’s buying detergent from Walmart any longer. Now scale that up again to groceries, petrol and even pet food and suddenly Walmart was just disintermediated.

As easy as that. Bye bye sales.

How it works

Thanks to a new integration with Amazon Dash Replenishment GE’s new line of connected dishwashers will take care of their own needs by ordering more detergent pods automatically when you’re close to running out.

You use the GE Kitchen app to customize the size of the order and the low threshold that will prompt the dishwasher to call for supplies. You link that app to your Amazon account, then count your current supply of detergent pods. The dishwasher takes it from there. The appliance tracks how many times it runs a cleaning cycle so it knows when it’s running short on detergent and uses Dash Replenishment to automatically order more from the online retailer. Amazon then ships them to your home.

Any connected GE dishwasher should now work with Amazon Dash, but the lineup of options is still thin – you can pick from three different styles of the same $1,500 premium model. Back at CES earlier this year, Whirlpool announced a similar integration on an upcoming $950 connected dishwasher, but that model hasn’t hit retail yet.

GE also offers Amazon Dash integration on its connected laundry products, and all of its smart appliances also integrate with IFTTT and Amazon’s Alexa so you can check in on the status of your large appliances from afar.

GE, one of the worlds largest white goods manufacturers is now stepping up its efforts to integrate their appliances with helpful smart home platforms and the Amazon Dash integration is only the beginning.