IMB Watson Internet of Things (IoT) and ABB Ability recently disclosed a strategic collaboration between to combine IBM’s cognitive capabilities and ABB’s industry-leading digital offerings in order to bring the value for customers industry, utilities, and transport and infrastructure to new heights.
Customers will be able to profit from IBM’s expertise in artificial intelligence, machine learning, and various industry verticals along with ABB’s deep knowledge of and extensive portfolio in digital solutions. The first joint industry solutions these two powerhouses are able to bring to the table will deliver real-time cognitive insights to the factory floor as well as smart grids.
“This powerful combination marks truly the next level of industrial technology, moving beyond current connected systems that simply gather data, to industrial operations and machines that use data to sense, analyse, optimise and take actions that drive greater uptime, speed and yield for ABB CEO, Ulrich Spiesshofer, said. “With an installed base of 70 million connected devices, 70,000 digital control systems and 6,000 enterprise software solutions, ABB is a trusted leader in the industrial space, and has a four decade long history of creating digital solutions for customers. IBM is a leader in artificial intelligence and cognitive computing. Together, IBM and ABB will create powerful solutions for customers to benefit from t he Fourth Industrial Revolution.”
Game changing solutions
The new game changing solutions IBM and ABB will bring to the table will aid companies in addressing some of their biggest industrial challenges, in a absolutely new way, much like improving quality control, lowering downtime, and raising the speed and yield of industrial processes. These solutions are beyond the connected systems currently used that are only able to collect data, and is a vital step in realising cognitive industrial machines that utilise data to reason, sense, understand, and take appropriate action to help remove inefficient processes and redundant tasks.
“This important collaboration with ABB will take [IBM] even deeper into industrial applications – from manufacturing, to utilities, to transportation and more,” Chairman, President, and CEO of IBM Ginni Rometty, said. “The data generated from industrial companies’ products, facilities and systems holds the promise of exponential advances in innovation, efficiency and safety. Only with [IBM’s] broad cognitive capabilities and our platform’s unique support for industries can this vast new resource be turned into value, with trust. We are eager to work in partnership with ABB on this new industrial era.”
Introducing real-time cognitive insights to the factory floor
The industry solutions will take advantage of IBM’s artificial intelligence to help spot and pinpoint defects with real-time production images that will be captured via ABB systems. After that, the images will be analysed using IBM Watson IoT for manufacturing. In the past, the inspections were done manually, a procedure that is not only slow, but is also prone to human error. By bringing the real-time cognitive insights to the factory floor, augmented by ABB’s industrial automated technology, companies will be much better equipped to raise the volume on their production lines while also improving accuracy and consistency at the same time.
As the parts in question move through the manufacturing process, the solution will send an alert to the manufacturer, giving information about critical faults – not visible to the naked eye – in the assembly quality. This would in turn allow quality control experts to quickly intervene. This easy identification of defects will affect all the goods in the production line, and will ultimately boost an organisation’s competitiveness while also aiding them in avoiding expensive recalls that could do reputational damage.
