China's reform agenda offers huge market for power, automation

The global industrial sector and Chinese economy have both entered a new phase of development, and China's reform agenda offers huge potential for improving the industrial sector, according to Ulrich Spiesshofer, CEO of ABB Group, a leading global power and automation company.

"If you look at what's happening at the moment around us in the automation industry, we are facing the fourth industrial revolution featuring the smart use of the Internet in the industrial context," said Spiesshofer at the ongoing ABB Automation World 2016, which showcases the most recent advances in the power and automation sector.

Spiesshofer explained about the shift in the sector to connect machines, services and people with the Internet, or "Internet of Things, Services and People" (IoTSP).

IoTSP enables us to integrate things that generate big data, then collect and analyze this data to help improve productivity and reliability, he said.

For example, we have robots in our factories that have sensors that send signals to our cloud repository service to be analyzed, Spiesshofer explained. Our technicians use the resultant data to optimize production, he added.

This smart sensor solution was first shown at April's industrial fair in Hanover, Germany. The system can transform simple motors into intelligent machines capable of sending real time operational information, thus, avoiding unexpected breakdowns and optimizing performance.

Spiesshofer believes that together with the global industrial changes, China's reform agenda, as outlined in the 13th Five-Year Plan, offers myriad opportunities for pioneering technology.

He predicted that energy structure evolution and growth of renewable energy will be a huge area of growth in China. In addition, demand for new technology and services in this regard will also be high.

Spiesshofer is upbeat about the Chinese market as the "Made in China 2025" manufacturing upgrade will need more power and automation technology support, as well as projects related to urbanization and the Belt and Road Initiative.

"ABB's presence in China has been a success story in the past 100-plus years with over 14 billion yuan (2.14 billion U.S.dollars) cumulative investment. We have a firm commitment to expand continuously in China and are ready to participate in China's reform agenda to improve productivity to the next level," he said.