Guided By Five-Year Plans, Deeply Rooted in China's Industrial Transformation: Understanding ABB's Development Path in Process Industries

I. Introduction: Anchoring to Five-Year Plans, Advancing in Sync with China's Industry

Since the 12th Five-Year Plan, China has used five-year plans as a clear direction to continuously promote the iterative upgrading of its industrial sectors. From eliminating outdated production capacity and promoting industrial upgrading to implementing "dual-carbon" targets and deploying the "AI+" top-level strategy, each stage of development has outlined a new picture of high-quality industrial development. As a benchmark enterprise in the global industrial sector, ABB has been rooted in the Chinese market for many years. Joachim Braun, Global President of ABB's Process Industries business, has personally witnessed the complete process of China's industry from scale growth to quality leap. Against the backdrop of industry transformation and technological change, ABB closely follows policy trends and aligns with local needs, continuously exerting its strength in process industries such as mining, steel, and pulp and paper, relying on cutting-edge technologies such as automation, intelligence, and artificial intelligence to grow in sync with China's industry.

II. Strategic Positioning: Leveraging Industrial Iteration and Seizing the Opportunity of Transformation

Looking back on more than a decade of development, each of China's five-year plans has brought new opportunities to the industrial market. ABB has accurately captured industry trends and found its own niche amidst industrial restructuring. While many believe that reducing overcapacity and cutting outdated production capacity will lead to market shrinkage, ABB sees this capacity clearing as a golden window for the rise of high-end automation and intelligent solutions. From the 12th Five-Year Plan to the 14th Five-Year Plan, policy guidance at different development stages has propelled the industry through successive transformations, allowing ABB's localization strategy to take root steadily.

During the 12th Five-Year Plan period, China's industry officially embarked on a transformation towards eliminating outdated production capacity and moving towards high-quality development. Recognizing this trend, ABB increased its investment in China's high-end manufacturing capabilities against the odds, successively building the world's only pulp and paper quality control system (QCS) production plant and a Shanghai elevator manufacturing base. The establishment of these two core bases not only solidified ABB's localized production advantages but also addressed the shortcomings in high-end technology for the two pillar industries of pulp and paper and mining, helping to build a comprehensive industrial support system and laying a solid foundation for subsequent industry upgrades.

Entering the 13th Five-Year Plan period, supply-side structural reforms continued to deepen, and traditional process industries such as steel systematically reduced inefficient capacity. The industry's development logic completely shifted away from extensive scale expansion and towards equipment transformation and technological upgrading. Adapting to market changes, ABB promptly adjusted its business focus, concentrating on high-value-added upgrading and transformation services, and deeply cultivating the steel industry's technological transformation track. To this day, providing intelligent upgrading solutions for process industries remains ABB's core business direction in traditional industrial sectors.

During the 14th Five-Year Plan period, "dual carbon" goals became an important theme of industrial development, and energy conservation, emission reduction, and green transformation became a consensus across the industry. For process industries, electrification is the core path to achieving carbon reduction. Against this backdrop, domestic industrial enterprises are no longer limited to single equipment energy-saving retrofits but have incorporated low-carbon development into their overall strategies, creating a systematic carbon reduction system. China's installed capacity of renewable energy continues to climb, with clean energy industries such as wind power and photovoltaics leading the world, providing solid support for industrial electrification transformation. ABB, adhering to the theme of green development, uses automation and electrification technologies to help process companies implement carbon emission targets, working hand-in-hand with the industry on the path of green and low-carbon transformation.

III. Breakthroughs in Different Sectors: Traditional Industries Forge Differentiated Upgrading Paths

Different industries, guided by policies and combined with their own industrial characteristics, have forged differentiated upgrading paths. The pulp and paper industry, leveraging its renewable raw material advantages, has caught the wave of "paper replacing plastic." With the rapid development of e-commerce and modern logistics, the demand for paper packaging continues to rise, revitalizing this traditional industry, and making sustainable development a core competitive advantage. The mining industry is accelerating its transformation around two main directions: safety and automation. Underground mining operations are high-risk and difficult to operate manually, making the unmanned and remote operation of processes a consensus within the industry.

Currently, computing power, wireless communication, and network security technologies are maturing, coupled with the deep empowerment of artificial intelligence, enabling unmanned mines to gradually move from concept to large-scale implementation. ABB has launched an automated drilling and blasting system and a remote centralized control center, while also collaborating with OEMs to enable autonomous operation of mining vehicles, comprehensively creating intelligent mining solutions. Of course, the implementation of unmanned operations also places higher demands on industrial network security and system redundancy, which are key technical challenges that the entire industry needs to continuously overcome.

IV. Technological Innovation: AI Empowers Industry, Transforming Practical Experience into Digital Assets

In the process of industrial unmanned and autonomous transformation, artificial intelligence is no longer just an auxiliary tool, but is gradually and deeply involved in production decision-making, completing the leap from the "execution layer" to the "decision-making layer." Industrial site conditions are complex and ever-changing, and fixed procedures cannot handle all emergencies. The practical experience accumulated by frontline operators is the core asset for ensuring stable production operations. How to transform implicit human experience into reusable and transferable digital assets has become a key issue in the intelligent upgrading of industry.

Addressing this industry pain point, ABB has built an industrial knowledge base system, relying on natural interaction technology to organize scattered frontline operational experience into standardized and structured data. This system can be used for new employee skills training, quickly filling talent gaps, and also importing accumulated experience data into the intelligent system, allowing AI to continuously learn and iterate, improving its autonomous judgment capabilities in complex scenarios. Simultaneously, the system sets intelligent boundaries, automatically switching to manual intervention in special working conditions that AI cannot handle, balancing intelligence and production safety. This digitizes and assetizes experience, truly activating the inherent potential of industrial production.

V. Deepening Local Focus: The Chinese Market Becomes a Core Hub for Global Innovation
For over a decade, the Chinese market has remained a crucial part of ABB's global strategy. Today, China is ABB's second-largest single market globally, with over 80% of the company's sales revenue coming from its local R&D, manufacturing, and service systems. Over the past decade, ABB has continuously invested approximately one billion US dollars in the Chinese market, driving a remarkable transformation in its market role: China is no longer just a product importer, but has become a forefront of global industrial technology innovation. Relying on a comprehensive supply chain system, a high-quality talent pool, and strategic guidance through five-year plans, Chinese industry is constantly fostering cutting-edge technologies and innovative solutions, while industrial solutions originating from China are reaching all parts of the world through industrial cooperation.

VI. Conclusion: Rooted in the Fertile Soil of Industry, Embarking on a New Journey of Industrial Intelligence

Rooted in the fertile soil of China's industry and keeping pace with the direction of industrial transformation, this has long been the foundation of ABB's development. Looking towards the "15th Five-Year Plan" period, with "AI+" incorporated into top-level design, industrial intelligence will usher in a new wave of explosive growth. In the future, ABB will continue to be based in China, innovate and break through, using automation, artificial intelligence, and electrification technologies to accompany the continuous advancement of process industries such as mining, steel, and pulp and paper, and join hands with Chinese industry on a new journey of high-quality development.

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