ABB Joins Industrial Internet Consortium to Promote Best Practices

ABB is joining the Industrial Internet Consortium (IIC), a group of more than 100 companies, organizations and universities working to accelerate growth of the Industrial Internet by identifying and promoting best practices and robust standards.

ABB has for years advanced the Industrial Internet via the company's control systems, communication technology and industrial sensors. These help customers use data to optimize operations on offshore platforms, in mining and robotics, aboard marine vessels and in the chemical and paper industries.

ABB will join the IIC starting in 2015 to foster collaboration among technology companies as they seek to establish global standards for the Industrial Internet. ABB will work with others to ensure that end users reap the benefits it promises: improved efficiency, reduced costs and higher revenue.

The Industrial Internet reflects the accelerating application of sensors, software and improved communication technology, allowing engineers to leverage enormous volumes of data from industrial systems to boost efficiency. The Industrial Internet is at the core of Industry 4.0, Germany's initiative for increased computerization of manufacturing. ABB has actively contributed to the creation of the Industry 4.0 vision and is actively working towards implementation of this ambitious undertaking.

For more than a decade, ABB's distributed control solutions including System 800xA have held the leading global market position, according to ARC Advisory Group. ABB control solutions are increasingly deployed to help oil and gas producers and power generators automate their plants.

Today, evolving communication technology and lower sensor costs, combined with higher performance of computers, offer new opportunities to collect, evaluate and integrate even more information from industrial facilities to boost efficiency, fine-tune maintenance and trim energy costs.

Harry Forbes, ARC Advisory Group, commented, "ABB equipment is deployed from deep subsea and offshore oil platforms all the way to wind farms, process plants and factories. ABB's membership in the IIC will bring to the consortium a firm with deep experience in managing remote assets and systems. Furthermore, ABB has traditionally played a non-partisan role in the industrial network technology disputes that have often hampered the progress of end user manufacturers."

Keywords: Industrial Internet, Interoperability, Security, Communication Technology, ARC Advisory Group.