Accelerating the construction of World-class enterprises: a guide to the transformation of China's chemical industry

Building world-class digital capabilities requires a comprehensive and sustainable digital transformation. The development of digital use cases based on business needs can bring real business benefits to enterprises. The business, organization and technology operation system established through digital transformation can help the sustainable development of the enterprise, and the transformation of the three aspects are coordinated with each other, and supplemented by change management, can ensure the practical landing of the all-round digital transformation.

To help set the benchmark for world-class digital manufacturing, McKinsey and the World Economic Forum have worked together to develop the evaluation criteria for digital lighthouse factories. By April 2022, through the evaluation and screening of nearly 2,000 factories around the world, the total number of lighthouse factory members has reached 103, of which 37 are located in China, accounting for more than 1/3 of the total number of lighthouse factories in the world.

It can be seen that the proportion of local enterprises is relatively low, and Chinese enterprises still have a large room for improvement in the construction of world-class digital and intelligent factories.

For chemical enterprises, digitalization is a transformation. Like the previous three technological revolutions (industrial revolution, electrical revolution, computer revolution), digitization also empowers the management and production of existing enterprises. Digital transformation will not succeed if it is separated from existing production operations and is not efficiency-oriented; it will only become a cosmetic "cosmetic project." Business leaders must clearly understand that digitization itself is not a panacea for overtaking on corners, and they need to continuously polish the management system and consolidate the management foundation in order to lay a solid foundation and achieve the success of digital construction.