Oct. 26, 2009 (PR Newswire) --

NEW YORK and SANTIAGO, Chile, Oct. 26 /PRNewswire/ -- As Latin America's reputation as a global services hub continues to grow, Chile's reputation as a stable, business-friendly environment providing a highly-skilled and talented workforce with strong engineering and technical capabilities continues to draw global companies seeking competitive advantage at a lower risk. ABB, the Swiss engineering and technology giant, recently chose Chile as the location for its first remote services center in Latin America to provide real-time monitoring, diagnostic services and technical assistance for equipment and other critical assets and processes in mining, power generation, forestry and other industries.

Supported by CORFO, Chile's Economic Development Agency, and its InvestChile program, the "ABB Remote Services Control Room" is designed to improve the productivity of remote industrial operations and increase profit margins through continuous process monitoring and optimization. By providing permanent supervision and preventative maintenance, the risk of equipment and operational failures - which lead to losses amounting to millions of dollars per year is reduced significantly.

"Chile was a natural choice for this innovative, pioneering project as the country has established itself as a leading source for engineering services," said ABB's country manager in Chile, Jose Paiva. "In our time here, we have been impressed by the scope of Chile's capabilities and strengths as a location for global operations. In addition, we have the ability to work with Chilean universities to further prepare future engineering talent for the challenges we face," he said.

Staffed by Chilean engineers, the center's control room platform - based on an "Extended Operator Workplace" tool - provides real-time monitoring of and rapid response to performance of plants and highly sophisticated equipment in order to ensure smooth operation and the highest rates of uptime. The engineers are able to simultaneously monitor events, analyze data and predict tendencies or failures in real time through sensors installed on the ground.

"We are very pleased by ABB's decision to set up this cutting-edge technology project in Chile.