ABB has launched ABB Ability™ Collaborative Operations for metals, enabling steel and aluminium producers to optimize operations, improve safety, monitor assets, and streamline maintenance by collaborating remotely in real time with ABB’s team of industry experts via digital technologies.
Leveraging the collective strengths of metals producers and ABB experts, Collaborative Operations services use data generated via mills’ IoT infrastructure to provide sophisticated information analytics and actionable insights that can help drive rapid, intelligent decision-making to optimize plant performance.
Key benefits include continuous collaboration and access to experts; increased asset availability; faster problem resolution and intelligent decision-making; increased productivity through improved asset performance and profitability; higher quality outputs; increased safety and security; and a reduction in the requirement for on-site visits. When there are changes in process performance, automatic alarms for plant operators and ABB experts are generated simultaneously to enable immediate corrective action.
“ABB Ability™ Collaborative Operations offers our customers deeper visibility into their process performance and asset condition, allowing better understanding of capabilities and operating boundaries,” said Nilabja Ash, Digital Service Manager, ABB Metals. “Key to the effectiveness of these solutions are remote support and insights from extensive ABB operational expertise, that customers can use to make better business decisions.”
Dedicated metals teams at ABB Ability™ Collaborative Operations Centers allow producers to combine mill-generated data with over a century of ABB metals process knowledge to optimize performance by connecting mill and plant operators, engineers and headquarters teams with ABB experts in metals-specific processes, automation and electrification, 24 hours a day, 365 days a year.
Figure 1: Collaborative Operations for Metals arrow diagram 
Figure 2 - Operator using ABB Ability™ Collaborative Operations system 
Figure 3 - Finished steel rolls ready for transportation
Nilabja Ash continued: “At ABB we believe a more collaborative approach is the way forward to improve system performance and optimize availability, yield, quality, productivity and profitability across the value chain.”
ABB’s Collaborative Operations solutions are proven to deliver significant improvements and savings across several industries, such as extending machine life by using immediate data analysis to better manage assets, processes and risks, and reducing maintenance costs by using predictive rather than preventive and reactive maintenance practices. In addition to asset management and predictive maintenance modules, other collaborative services for metals include data analytics options for profile and cold rolling, remote monitoring for drives, control loops and cybersecurity, as well as alarm and safety management.
The ABB Ability™ platform and cloud infrastructure is used, enabling customers to automatically gather and analyze information on processes, assets and risks. Using these analytics, areas for performance improvement are automatically identified, categorized and prioritized so that customers on-site, together with ABB experts in Collaborative Operations Centers, can act to ensure that each plant is operating safely, efficiently and productively.
ABB Ability™ is a unified, cross-industry digital platform - extending from device to edge to cloud - with systems, solutions and services that enable customers to know more, do more, do better, together. More information on Collaborative Operations for metals can be found on ABB's website here:
https://new.abb.com/metals/digital/abb-ability-collaborative-operations
ABB is a trusted partner and leading supplier to the metals industry, offering a complete range of products, services and end-to-end solutions that improve productivity, quality, safety and cost-efficiency in iron, steel, aluminium and other metals production processes. With over a century of experience, ABB’s offerings are expertly tailored and highly process-specific, serving the entire industry from material yard and primary manufacturing to casting, rolling and processing lines. Across the whole metals value chain ABB demonstrates a commitment to optimizing operations with high performance products and digital solutions. abb.com/metals
ABB Ability™ Collaborative Operations provides powerful digital solutions that take advantage of today’s operation and information technologies to help you increase productivity, optimize operations and ensure security. ABB Collaborative Operations combines the platform, people and places necessary to bring ABB expertise directly to you, wherever you are.
ABB (ABBN: SIX Swiss Ex) is a leading global technology company that energizes the transformation of society and industry to achieve a more productive, sustainable future. By connecting software to its electrification, robotics, automation and motion portfolio, ABB pushes the boundaries of technology to drive performance to new levels. With a history of excellence stretching back more than 130 years, ABB’s success is driven by about 110,000 talented employees in over 100 countries. www.abb.com
