More than 11,000 customers have been gathering this week at the George R. Brown Convention Center in Houston, Texas to experience, feel and touch the new ABB. With its innovative ABB Ability™ offering of digital solutions and services across all business areas, ABB is a leader in industrial digitalization. ABB’s bi-annual Customer World takes place from March 4-7. At the event ABB is showcasing solutions to help customers realize the tremendous productivity and performance improvements that digitalization offers.
The offerings range from demonstrations by YuMi®, the world’s first truly collaborative robot, to an actual factory of the future, where several robots work together in an automated environment, as well as digital and connected solutions. These are a testimony to ABB’s mission to solve some of the biggest global challenges, which are created by the Energy and Fourth Industrial Revolutions and are changing the way we power our societies, produce our goods and services, and work, live and move.
Amongst the buzz of activity taking place throughout the exhibition area ABB CEO Ulrich Spiesshofer said: “We really wowed our customers with our breadth of offering and the deep domain expertise that we showed.”
The keynote arena early in the week was filled to capacity for numerous dynamic speeches. After delivering a well-received opening keynote speech on the first day of the event, Spiesshofer followed up the next day discussing how ABB is placing partnership at the very heart of the event. He told customers: “We have built a common backbone with leading companies like Dassault Systèmes, Hewlett Packard Enterprise (HPE), IBM and Microsoft to provide a unique platform and support the use of technology to make your business more competitive.” Spiesshofer was joined onstage by HPE CEO Antonio Neri, who added that the enterprise of the future will be “edge-centric, cloud-enabled and data-driven.”
ABB Ability™, the globally leading digital offering in Industry 4.0, from device to edge to cloud, is taking center stage at the event, two years after its global launch, at ACW Houston. Some 45 percent of ABB's new orders are generated from digital solutions, while the order pipeline for ABB Ability™ has increased by more than 20 percent since October, 2018.
Peter Terwiesch, ABB President Industrial Automation Business presented a session titled “Digitalization and the future of industry” during which he commented: “We’re moving away from single pieces of equipment needing manual intervention, to an interconnected facility with 98 percent less manual intervention allowing for autonomous functioning”. ABB is driving the development of increasingly sophisticated autonomous technologies, which will transform industry by enabling unprecedented visibility and control over machines, plants and systems.
All of ABB’s business leaders are presenting at the event, with more highlights to come as the event continues.
