Software upgrade helps Swaziland utility bring more reliable power to its citizens

2014-11-16 ABB Gourp Press Releases

ABB has signed a significant software license agreement with Swaziland Electricity Company (SEC), the government-owned provider of electricity generation, transmission and distribution to the Kingdom of Swaziland. As part of the agreement, SEC will upgrade its Ventyx Ellipse work and asset management platform to the latest release to further optimize the management and visibility of its asset infrastructure and the workforce maintaining it.

Rural electrification continues to be a major priority for Swaziland’s Ministry of Natural Resources and Energy, the national energy authority which formed the SEC in 2007 to provide reliable, affordable, safe, and sustainable power to its citizens and to help eradicate poverty in the Southern African state. The upgrade is part of a major transformation project by SEC to improve power supply, rural electrification, and customer service – while minimizing operating costs.

Supported on low-cost technology platforms, the upgraded version of the Ellipse software helps minimize the expense for business process support in key areas of asset and work management, work requests, payroll, rostering, absence management, and employee self-service (ESS). SEC will implement Ellipse Work Planner for advanced maintenance planning to improve asset availability while reducing costs.

SEC is moving to a newer software version having already used Ellipse for 18 years. “By upgrading to the latest version, we can continue to use one single, easy-to-use platform for all enterprise resource management functions – offering us significant productivity and cost efficiency gains,” underlined Melusi Malinga, Chief Information Officer, SEC. In this way, ABB is supporting SEC in its mission to deliver a reliable and safe power supply amid the challenges of managing extensive operational networks, assets and workforces while expanding the rural distribution network to provide a better quality of life to more of the country’s citizens