If there is one thing that characterizes ABB, it is our technological leadership. It has been an intrinsic part of our DNA since we started our journey more than a century ago, and it has been at the heart of everything we have done since then.
When everything started
ABB results from the merge of two companies, the Swedish Allmänna Svenska Elektriska Aktiebolaget (ASEA), founded in 1890, and the Swiss BBC Ltd., founded in 1891. For 80 years, ASEA and the BBC have expanded separately throughout the world and consolidated themselves as two of the main electrical technology companies. In 1988, the two companies merged to form ABB (Asea Brown Boveri, Ltd.), which has become one of the largest engineering companies in the world.
In Portugal, the founding companies of ABB were established in the second half of the 20th century: BBC in 1956, in Porto, and ASEA in 1961, in Lisbon.
A safe world, a smart world, a sustainable world
At ABB, we conceive a Future where security is “embedded” in our solutions and in everything we do, developing technology that keeps people safe at home, at work and at leisure.
We drive progress with our smart technologies where the physical and digital world are fully integrated. Machines, factories, buildings, vehicles… connected and optimized, and where people continue to play a central role, performing a safer, healthier and more enriching job.
At the same time, we protect the planet, innovating in the way we work and live, with a commitment to make our factories carbon neutral and develop increasingly efficient products, to make our customers and our world more sustainable.
Digital Innovation
ABB is based on four business areas, Electrification; Process Automation; Motion; and Robotics & Discrete Automation and has a wide and diversified portfolio of products and solutions in different areas, from distribution solutions, smart power, intelligent buildings,installation and energy conversion products and electrical mobility, having entered this market in 2010 and selling so far more than 400,000 electric vehicle chargers in more than 85 markets; turbochargers for ships and measurement and analytics systems and products; highly energy efficient motors and drives that can, with their adoption, make possible to reduce global electricity consumption by up to 10%; large robots, ABB was the first company in the world to market a microprocessor controlled electric industrial robot in 1974, to small collaborative robots… And for more than 100 years, a lot of time and energy has been invested in perfecting traditional core technologies in our business.
Until recently, improvements were made using materials and electro-mechanics, but in today’s world our customers increasingly expect to interact and managed ABB´s technological solutions and services just as they access information in their private lives, using mobile phones and “cloud” applications.
Digitization allows customers to do just that, it offers a more direct connection to equipment, where real-time data and the operational status of their assets are always available. This allows for optimized decisions and greater availability of assets throughout the life cycle.
With the move to digitalization, there has been a huge increase in data production and ABB, with over 40 years of experience in digital technology, is in a unique position to transform this massive and varied data, generated by products and solutions, into actionable insights for customers.
Innovating with environmental awareness
What does the future hold? The most successful companies are never satisfied with their status quo, they are always thinking about the next innovation, the next level of performance… However as companies, which account for about two thirds of the world’s consumption of electricity, face goals of greater sustainability defined by governments, innovation must necessarily incorporate sustainability.
At ABB, we want to lead by setting an example. We have set very ambitious internal sustainability goals and we want, by 2030, in partnership with our customers and suppliers, to reduce emissions and achieve carbon neutrality in our own operations and to help customers reduce their own annual CO2 emissions, at more than 100 megatons; the equivalent to the annual emissions of 30 million combustion cars.
ABB has always taken a sustainable approach to its business and we will continue to push the boundaries of technology while maintaining a focus on balancing the needs of society, the environment and the economy, to create success for all our stakeholders.
