Walt Boyes' Blog

ABB chief technology officer Peter Terwiesch led us on a Mr. Toad's Wild Ride through the future of technology this morning as he discussed ABB's technical roadmap. Terweisch went through the standard challenges and the drivers for R&D. Then he talked about some coming technology trends: *MEMS: Terweisch talked about the ABB partnership with MIT to develop MEMS relays-- … [Read more...] about A Dizzying Journey through Technologyland with Peter Terwiesch

Probe of BP Plant Blast Cites Oversight By RASHA MADKOUR (Associated Press Writer) From Associated Press March 21, 2007 4:03 AM EDT TEXAS CITY, Texas - Overly lax federal oversight and cost-cutting by BP were factors in a 2005 explosion at the oil giant's Texas City refinery that killed 15 people and injured 170, the worst U.S. industrial accident since 1990, a government … [Read more...] about More about BP Texas City…

What is your humble reporter doing tomorrow? I've got a full day of panels and tutorials I'll be attending: 8:00 am: WEX-04 Technology Roadmap from ABB: Part 1 - Leveraging Automation Technologies to Gain Productivity Advantage Rapid progress in commercial-off-the-shelf information technologies has been a main enabler also for automation technologies for more than a decade. At … [Read more...] about a look ahead…

Fred Kindle, ABB's President and CEO, held forth this afternoon at an Executive Forum. He talked about globalization, consolidation, and industry trends: emerging a winner. He said he had four themes: --increasing economic and political UNCERTAINTY --new trends in techno-social ENVIRONMENT --GLOBALIZATION --growing importance of CAPITAL MARKETS If this sounds like his speech … [Read more...] about from the department of "more time with Fred…"

...was Greg Scheu, vice president in charge of motors, drives, and process instrumentation. His group did $6.8 billion in revenue in 2006, and a lot of that came from North America. He asserted that his was ABB's most profitable division, with a strong 23% growth rate, and significant growth in North America, as well. ...then came Roger Bailey, who runs control systems and the … [Read more...] about Next up at ABB's press conference…