Zurich, Switzerland - ABB announced Oct. 29 that it has again streamlined its divisions to strengthen its customer focus. The former Power Technology Products and Utilities divisions have been merged to form a new Power Technologies division, which is under the leadership of Peter Smits. Meanwhile, the Automation Technology Products and Industries divisions have been merged to form a new Automation Technologies division, which is under the leadership of Dinesh Paliwal.

ABB's Automation Technologies has $9.3 billion in annual revenues and 63,000 employees, which makes ABB one of the world's largest automation companies. ''ABB is the only company in the world offering both process automation and robotics-based discrete automation products and services. This has become very important to our customers as they seek further efficiencies through integrating continuous and discrete manufacturing processes,'' says Mr. Paliwal, who is also a member of ABB's group executive committee, as well as a division head.