Swiss embassy in Washington salutes 125 years of ABB

Customers and officials assemble for an evening honoring ABB’s past achievements and highlighting its latest innovations, including YuMi

WASHINGTON – Approximately 100 customers and US officials were welcomed by ABB to an evening reception yesterday at the residence of Switzerland’s Ambassador to the United States, Martin Dahinden. The guests enjoyed dinner and a live musical performance as well as presentations by CEO Ulrich Spiesshofer and President of the Americas Region Greg Scheu on the subject of ABB’s latest technological accomplishments.

Special guest Suzan LeVine, the United States Ambassador to Switzerland and Liechtenstein, raised a toast to ABB and to the assembled guests for contributing to strong relations between Switzerland and the United States. “A lot of what we do as ambassadors is to promote business relations between countries,” she remarked. “Why do we do this? It’s not simply about money. It’s about making the world a better place.” Ambassador LeVine went on to note that the two countries can and do exchange a great deal of knowledge and human capital in ways that generate better opportunities for millions of people. ABB plays an important part in this process.

Ambassador Dahinden, the evening’s host, provided a short history of the company founded in 1891 as Brown, Boveri & Cie. President Scheu described ABB’s extensive operations in the United States and introduced CEO Spiesshofer. In a short presentation, Spiesshofer described the world’s reliance on electricity for activities of every kind and went on to discuss the tremendous potential of the Internet of Things, Services and People – connecting machines with each other and with data processing services in ways that can generate huge new efficiencies. He talked about how ABB is helping its customers, and the world, take advantage of the digital revolution.

Spiesshofer went on to note that greater automation will in fact result in some job losses. “But even more new jobs will be created,” he stated. “Jobs of every kind are changing faster than ever before. Part of our job is to ensure we bring everybody along with us to take part in the technological revolution.” He concluded by thanking ABB’s valued customers and promised, “We will work very hard to keep earning your trust for another 125 years.”

Scheu introduced a live video transmission from Solar Impulse’s mission control center in Monaco. The groundbreaking solar aircraft, well along on its unprecedented round-the-world journey, took off from New York earlier in the day on its way to Europe. André Borschberg, one of the airplane’s two pilots, appeared on screen to explain the significance of the technologies deployed by Solar Impulse. “The airplane is essentially a flying smart grid, which shows how we can store and use energy in a much more efficient way,” he said. Spiesshofer commented that the ambitious project demonstrates what can be done to decouple economic growth from environmental impacts.

 

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ABB Corporate Communications

Stories written by the corporate communications team based at the ABB headquarters in Zurich, Switzerland
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