The Story Behind ABB Group: A Multinational Industrial Juggernaut

By: | November 20th, 2014

ABB Group Market Cap $60 Billion

Getting to know ABB is a bit like the Indian story of “The Blind Men and the Elephant”: whatever part of ABB you touch first will only tell you a little about its other parts.

ABB, headquarterd in Zurich, Switzerland, traces its roots back to 1890 and its founding in Sweden. Today ABB primarily manufactures industrial power and automation technology focusing on secure, efficient technology for producing, transmitting, and distributing electricity primarily in the industrial, commercial and utility sectors.

Here are a few of ABB’s capabilities:

  • helping power plants run at the highest possible levels of efficiency, no matter what the source
  • efficiently and reliably transmitting power over long distances
  • creating transmission and distribution substations for power transfers
  • managing distribution networks by offering automation and communications solutions that improve industrial operation efficiency and reliability
  • offering products such as circuit breakers, switchgear, capacitors, instrument transformers, power distribution equipment and the like to improve efficiency and lower environmental impacts
  • offering consulting, repair, refurbishment and maintenance of global installed bases of energy equipment and electrical systems.
  • manufacturing and delivering electrification solutions
  • increasing productivity, energy efficiency and workplace safety using programmable logic controllers (PLCs) and control systems leading to improved scheduling, execution, management and measurement of industrial processes
  • manufacturing motors for key equipment and frequency converters for fans, pumps, compressors, conveyors, kilns, centrifuges, mixers, extruders, hoists and cranes.
  • creating building automation and control circuit breakers, switches and control products for buildings to make them more efficient and services to help building management manage lifecycle services such as preventative, predictive and corrective maintenance.
  • making transportation and shipping more efficient and minimizing environmental impact

The following video traces ABB’s involvement as pioneer, leader and innovator in robotics over the past 40 years in a sector that is inextricably linked to the automated, efficient and productive economy in the 21st century.

ABB Group: “Power and Productivity for a Better World”

Over the past two years ABB has experienced some of its best results ever with record revenues and earnings, a healthy compound annual growth rate (CAGR) and record profits as detailed in ABB’s 2013 Annual Report:

The following video shows ABB’s solar power solutions from individual homes to utility scale applications:.

ABB Mission

ABB Group mission statement focuses on three areas: profitable growth, business-led collaboration with customers and relentless execution.

According to the 2013 Annual Report ABB Group has continued to execute on these principles by:

  • remaining the global leader for distributed control systems
  • building a smart energy substation in China
  • installing a subsea transmission link connecting Thornton Bank to the Belgian grid
  • expanding its education foundation
  • harnessing 75 MW of solar energy in South Africa
  • working with Statoil developing subsea solutions for oil and gas production at depths of 9,842 feet (3000 m)
  • creating low voltage circuit breakers that protect electrical circuits and adapting energy consumption to actual needs
  • testing of a new electrical bus in Geneva
  • working with WWF India setting up solar powered battery charging station
  • leading advances in the A200-L’s compressor

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David Russell Schilling

David enjoys writing about high technology and its potential to make life better for all who inhabit planet earth.

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