IBM Watson optimizes production and logistics processes in real time at ABB enterprises

IBM Watson helps to avoid unexpected problems and cracks in production

ABB is one of the largest companies that specializes in electrical engineering, power engineering and information technology. Its offices are represented in more than 100 countries of the world, and production facilities are located in countries such as Germany, Switzerland, Sweden, Italy, France, Russia, Czech Republic, India, China, USA, Portugal, Brazil, Finland, Estonia and others. Now this company is planning to use IBM technology in order to work even more efficiently.

In particular, the production is planned to introduce IBM Watson Internet of Things . This will help to optimize and make effective the work of many production processes, from the manufacture of goods to logistics and sales. Thus, it is planned to improve quality control, reduce the number and downtime, increase productivity. In general, all that is important for business. The usual optimization tools have already been used to the maximum; now we have to work with new tools - cognitive technologies and the “Internet of things” from IBM.


ABB is not new to the use of modern technology. About 70 million of connected devices, 70,000 digital control systems and 6,000 different types of corporate software have been installed in enterprises and offices of the company. With the help of cognitive technologies, the company wants to unify and combine individual elements of its digital infrastructure.
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Due to this, it is planned to reduce the expenditure of resources in production, both material and temporary. Production, logistics and other processes will be monitored in real time thanks to IBM Watson and IBM Watson IoT for Manufacturing .

Until recently, product quality checks were carried out, if not manually, then in semi-automatic mode. But the use of cognitive technologies allows us to automate this process as much as possible, speeding up production itself and improving quality control. If the system reveals an important problem, it will immediately notify the technical support representative, and the problem will be eliminated. Basically, we are talking about critical issues that are invisible at first glance. And the early diagnosis of even small problems will help avoid their proliferation in large-scale technical problems. It is worth emphasizing that all this happens in real time.


All of this is just one aspect of using the capabilities of IBM Watson. In addition, the cognitive system will collect data on the region’s energy supply, weather conditions at each point in time, transport system features and other information. Processing this data will help to determine the optimal factors for production and logistics. The forecast of temperature, sunny days, wind speed will help predict the needs of consumers. And this, in turn, will provide the ability to load production lines at the level at which this is required at a particular moment.

For example, in bad weather, fewer shoppers go to stores, which happens, say, during the first week of October. IBM Watson can predict this in advance. And so the company will be able to reduce the release of goods in a particular region and avoid overproduction with a delay in goods in warehouses.



Watson also helps in pricing, predicting the amount of resources required at a certain time and in many other aspects of the work. As already mentioned, ABB works in more than 100 countries, and the number of employees exceeds 132 thousand people. So to manage such a huge infrastructure, differentiated across different regions and even continents, is very difficult. In this case, IBM technologies will help to optimize all production and transport processes in parallel with cost reduction.