ABB and IBM have entered into a strategic partnership to bring real-time cognitive insights to the factory floor and smart grids.

The first two joint industry solutions powered by ABB’s industry leading digital offering, ABB Ability, and IBM Watson, will aim to unlock new value for customers in utilities, industry, transport and infrastructure, the companies said.

Ulrich Spiesshofer, CEO at ABB, said: “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 industrial customers.

“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,” Spiesshofer added. “Together, IBM and ABB will create powerful solutions for customers to benefit from the fourth industrial revolution.”

The new suite of breakthrough solutions developed by both companies will help organisations solve their biggest industrial challenges, such as improving quality control, reducing downtime and increasing speed and yield of industrial processes. Unlike the current connected systems which only gather data, the companies argue, the new solutions use data to understand, sense, reason and take actions supporting industrial workers to help eliminate inefficient processes and redundant tasks.

©iStock.com/Valerie Loiseleux