by
Jim Pinto
As one of the industrial
automation majors, ABB is clearly making strong commitments to wireless. Perhaps
the lack of big ABB announcements over "wireless initiatives" is because the
company is spread over many different industrial markets, not just process
controls (like Emerson and Honeywell).
In a 2006 wireless briefing on "Wireless and Mobility"
provided to selected industry analysts, ABB shows the significant breadth and
scope of its wireless offerings. There are lots of wireless products for extreme
locations, for quickly instrumenting temporary situations, global location and
status tracking.
ABB serves much broader markets than other automation
leaders. Their two main business segments are Automation and Power. Over the
past couple of years many different wireless products have been introduced - for
water and electricity meters, power equipment and switchgear monitoring, machine
monitoring, wireless monitoring in the oil & gas industry, power and fuel
meters, mobile power-line & cable inspection, power breakers.
For process control environments, ABB offers wireless
process transmitters and fieldbus distributed I/O, plus wireless upgrades for
4-20mA HART installations and wireless HMI - all with interface to PCs and
wireless PDAs (tools in the field-engineer's pocket).
While others are doing a big song-and-dance, ABB is busy
expanding its industrial wireless offerings.
Cheers,
Jim Pinto
jim@jimpinto.com
San Diego, CA. USA
