To prepare for Hannover Messe, ABB and Accenture developed the customer journey and mobile app demo in only six weeks. The solution has become a central part of ABB Ability, the company’s unified, cross-industry digital capability.

The team, including Accenture’s Industrial Software Center of Excellence in Romania, used an agile development approach to create new features and functionalities as ABB’s Smart Sensor device and solution evolved. It also maintains the overall solution, providing updates and upgrades in the ABB cloud.

Factory managers can monitor their motors’ health, status, history and other details within and across factories. They can even access this data from their home. Over time, the insights can help them work motors harder to improve production bandwidth, for instance. Or they can hold off on routinely replacing a motor that still has more life left in it. In both cases, these insights help to extend a motor’s lifecycle while mitigating the risk of disrupting production. The continuous insights and alerts are also helping ABB’s customers reduce costs and improve efficiencies.

Customers can monitor the condition of whole fleets of assets—not just motors—including bearings, drives and pumps. This allows management to gain insights into the interdependencies of their assets and how these relationships affect breakdowns. With the condition of their essential equipment at their fingertips, they can focus their attention on decision making and achieving their business goals.

With its new capabilities, ABB can better compete in a digital world. Improving time to market, differentiating its products, creating new opportunities to provide services, and generating value for customers with actionable insights and a state-of-the-art customer experience.

• ABB can gather data from its sensors to benchmark its own motors, improving product lines and saving on manufacturing costs without reducing quality.
• Since the sensors can be retrofitted onto ABB competitor motors, the insights can identify strengths and weaknesses in the equipment and help ABB gain insights into new industry verticals.
• ABB can work with other industrial asset manufacturers to sell its sensor as part of their offering to their customers, increasing sensor sales indirectly.
• Powertrain monitoring encourages customers to use sensors across different types of equipment, enabling ABB to cross-sell and upsell its sensors and services.
• The new tools are helping to improve ABB’s relationship with ecosystem members like service providers, offering them the insights to do their jobs better.