ABB keeps the lights on with AI-based workforce management software
Case in point: ABB Group
At a glance
Utilities and other asset-based businesses rely on ABB software to efficiently manage their assets and field workforces at a time when asset infrastructures are aging and budgets are tight. ABB is transforming its workforce management applications into software as a service (SaaS) offerings using Microsoft Azure. The newest product, ABB Ability Ellipse Workforce Management (WFM), mobilizes maintenance, inspection, and outage work, which delivers greater worker efficiency, vast scalability, continuous innovation, and lower costs.
Let’s face it, we all take power and electricity for granted. For as long as we’ve all known, it’s been there for us—always on, always strong. It’s in the background lighting our way, powering our homes, enabling our ever-growing digital lifestyle.
But, it’s more fragile than we think. A strong gust of wind, a broken branch, simple human error, and our lives are suddenly interrupted. Extreme weather events, such as high winds, flooding, and extreme heat, can force power outages, plunging modern cities into darkness.
ABB works hard to keep the darkness at bay. The Zurich, Switzerland–based engineering giant makes equipment used in all phases of power generation, distribution, and transmission—from room-sized transformers and massive switchgears to capacitors and transmission systems.
Through its Enterprise Software group, ABB also makes software that helps asset-intensive businesses such as utilities address inspection, maintenance, and outage work, and mobilize their workforces to execute work efficiently. For 20 years, utilities in electric, gas, water, and other verticals have used ABB workforce management software to get the right technician with the right skills to the right place at the right time—to keep their assets functioning optimally. Hundreds of customers rely on ABB software to make their assets and their field workforces more productive and efficient.
The company’s marque WFM application is ABB Ability Ellipse Workforce Management (WFM), introduced in December 2017. It empowers service technicians to navigate the challenges of performing routine or complex inspections and maintenance work using world-class mobility. It is an evolution of the ABB on-premises workforce management solution that thousands of mobile technicians and dispatchers rely on every day to solve their toughest field challenges. In fact, ABB data shows that customers using the software have increased field productivity by 15 to 25 percent, decreased their drive time between sites by 10 percent, and improved customer satisfaction by 20 percent.
Business challenge
When ABB set out to develop ABB Ability Ellipse WFM, it had a long list of customer requests: hands-free interaction so that field technicians wouldn’t need to remove their gloves to enter data, easy connectivity to home-office staff for impromptu consultation and assistance, an “evergreen” cloud-based deployment model that eliminated on-premises software upgrades, and more scalability for utilities and other asset-intensive companies that need to manage large-scale field workforces.
“Our customers’ businesses are evolving,” says James Pierre-Noel, Senior Director of Product Management at ABB Enterprise Software. “Many utilities have aging infrastructures, which changes the way they maintain and inspect their gear. An asset that’s 2 years old doesn’t need much inspection, but a 25-year-old transformer requires a lot more attention. Most utilities have budget only to replace 5 percent of their infrastructure in any given year, so they want to empower their field workforce to do more effective maintenance on these assets.”
ABB decided that the cloud offered the fastest path to meeting customers’ urgent needs. “The innovation cycle moves very quickly today—we want to set the pace by offering our customers advances like wearable technology that deliver value beyond what competitors offer,” Pierre-Noel says. “We can adopt new technology and innovate faster in the cloud.”
ABB Ability, the unique ABB integrated industrial internet platform that uses Microsoft Azure, serves as the backbone for ABB Ability Workforce Management. The platform creates an open, globally available digital-industrial ecosystem for customers, partners, suppliers, and developers and takes full advantage of Azure cybersecurity, artificial intelligence (AI), and core services, such as Azure IoT solution accelerators and Cortana Intelligence. This allows ABB customers to capitalize on insights gathered at every level, from device to system, enterprise, and cloud.
“We appreciate that Azure is available in 32 regions around the globe, with plans for more, because we have customers in just about every country of the world,” says Pierre-Noel. “It’s critical that we partner with a company that can follow our business wherever we go.”
Pierre-Noel’s team used Azure platform as a service (PaaS) offerings, such as Azure SQL Database, Azure Service Bus, and Azure Service Fabric, to drive Ability Ellipse WFM using a microservices-based architecture. The team further converted Ability Ellipse WFM into a software as a service (SaaS) offering, eliminating the need for customers to install it on-premises.
ABB uses an Azure Cognitive Search–based engine for fast, easy searching through operational data on control room dashboards. It uses the Logic Apps feature of Azure App Service to connect Ellipse WFM to other enterprise systems, such as SAP and Maximo. And it uses Azure Application Insights and Azure Log Analytics to monitor system health and provide dashboards and alerts. Soon, ABB will use Microsoft Cognitive Services, Azure Machine Learning, and Azure Bot Service to add chatbots, predictive analytics, and other AI capabilities to Ellipse WFM.
“We’re excited to develop software in the cloud. It allows us to deliver faster to market and gives us the flexibility to innovate using a modern architecture,” Pierre-Noel says. “A SaaS model enables us to deliver outstanding infrastructure reliability and performance, which in turn gives our customers the confidence to run their businesses on our infrastructure. Microsoft has really helped us navigate any concerns about moving to the cloud.”
Industry 4.0 solution
ABB Ability Ellipse WFM includes modern features that help field maintenance staff work more efficiently and safely. It incorporates hands-free operation and voice interactivity, which makes it easier for field technicians to keep both hands available for work in situations where holding a device simply isn’t feasible. For example, inspections while hanging 10 meters in the air off the side of an electrical tower become easier and safer to execute.
Ellipse WFM is part of ABB Connected Asset Lifecycle Management, which allows a work order to move through the Ellipse Enterprise Asset Management (EAM), Asset Performance Management (APM), and Workforce Management (WFM) modules, allowing customers to do condition-based monitoring of assets. This is a vast improvement over the time-based asset management employed by many utilities today.
In addition to hands-free functionality using a wearable device, Ellipse WFM features innovations, such as the ability to stream live video to the back office for virtual assistance and the ability to self-dispatch work to fill idle time, all of which lets a field force be more productive.
Soon, through the use of Cognitive Services, a technician will be able to say to Ellipse WFM, “I see a transformer leak; create a service order,” and the software will do so. And on the ABB roadmap is the ability for Ellipse WFM to incorporate more Cognitive Services like image recognition into the software’s standard offering. These are only some of the many planned innovations coming in the near future to Ellipse WFM.
“It’s an exciting time, because with Ellipse WFM we are finding new ways to disrupt the market and change the way customers think about workforce management,” Pierre-Noel says.
Business outcomes
The product’s cloud and microservices–based architecture delivers many benefits. ABB considers scalability one of the most important. “With Azure, we can scale Ellipse WFM to serve tens of thousands of users,” Pierre-Noel says.
Elastic scalability is especially valuable when major storms hit and utilities call in hundreds of extra service technicians to help restore power. With Ellipse WFM in the hands of all those technicians, utilities will have much better, real-time information about what’s going on in the field. This helps them give end customers and stakeholders, such as local and state governments, a sense of when services will be restored, be they electric, gas, or water.
Offering Ellipse WFM as a SaaS product eliminates big, expensive product upgrades. Today, ABB can “drip-feed” a steady stream of innovation to customers through an evergreen software model. “As we develop new functionality, we can push it out to customers, get their feedback, and create a continuous and iterative cycle of improvement,” Pierre-Noel says.
ABB plans to enhance Ellipse WFM with chat bots that prompt technicians for specific answers and essentially talk them through a service procedure. The company might also take advantage of in-device cameras to monitor technicians’ movements, so that Ellipse WFM can issue safety warnings, advice, and guidance.
“In Azure, we have a rich menu of services that we can use to make our workforce management solution smarter so field technicians are more productive,” Pierre-Noel says. “Partnering with Microsoft means we can rely on their resources to deliver the infrastructure needed to support our vision, and they bring the added benefit of making integration to our product seamless.”
Because Ellipse WFM is a SaaS solution, it’s affordable for thousands of smaller utilities around the world that can‘t afford enterprise workforce management solutions. “Our focus is bringing down total cost of ownership for our customers, and Azure helps us do that,” says Pierre-Noel. “Instead of spending millions of dollars a year to run a solution on-premises, our customers spend a flat amount per user per year for Ellipse WFM. We’re greatly expanding our market while helping thousands more utilities manage their mobile workforces more efficiently.”
By helping customers put the right technician with the right skills and tools in the right place at the right time, ABB helps customers with all types of networks keep their assets running optimally—and keep the lights on.
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