Where is the digital construction road of chemical Enterprises? Look at what BASF, Wanhua Chemical, Sinopec do

First, Industry 4.0: the digital transformation trap of chemical enterprises

To answer these questions, an IBM survey of 300 chemical companies around the world can be used as a reference.

According to the survey, a group of chemical companies in the sample significantly outperformed their peers - with 120% higher revenue growth, 105% higher profits, and 114% higher efficiency.

The analysis found that this group of high-performing chemical companies were 30% more likely to have a digital strategy and execution plan.

In addition to deploying relevant technology products, these companies have also made changes to their operating models and often hired a CDO(Chief Data Officer) or similar function to orchestrate strategies and methods for implementing digital, managing, analyzing, and controlling data.

Digital transformation is not spending money to deploy another set of software, but a comprehensive operational upgrade that goes deep into the fabric of the enterprise.

The process attributes of the chemical industry are particularly suited to digital transformation, which is an important reason why advanced digital companies are far more profitable, efficient, and safe than their peers. In the long run, the digitalization of chemical industry is also reshaping the industry ecology, making flexible manufacturing, clean production, and circular economy fully popular, and the innovative reform of the chemical industry in the future will inevitably be incubated from digitalization.

However, it is also because the standardized production process attributes are too suitable for digital upgrading, which provides convenience for chemical enterprises to urgently launch digital software, so that many enterprises fall into the "tool trap" and "policy trap".

2. From No. 27 to Wanhua Chemistry, four modes of digitalization

In the 1970s, SAP, Oracle and other software companies were established, European and American enterprises took the lead in the process of informatization, the advent of industry 3.0 era, and the great development of production process automation;

Since the 1990s, China's chemical industry has successively deployed informatization;

In 2013, Germany, which has the highest degree of industrial automation, proposed the concept of "Industry 4.0", and the comprehensive transformation of the manufacturing industry "digital and intelligent" kicked off.

In 2015, China proposed the "Made in China 2025", and in the following years, The State Council and the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology successively issued documents, and China's industrial digital transformation was fully opened.

In 2020, the Central Deep Reform Commission reviewed and adopted the "Guiding Opinions on Deepening the Integrated Development of a New Generation of Information Technology and Manufacturing", and the policy further deepened all aspects of the digital transformation of the manufacturing industry.

In 2020, the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology and the Ministry of Emergency Management jointly issued the "Industrial Internet + Safety Production" action Plan (2021-2023), and the digitalization, networking and intelligence of safety production have become the focus of policy supervision.

This year, the "14th Five-Year Plan" proposed to "accelerate digital development and build a digital China", to drive the overall transformation of production methods, lifestyles and governance with digital transformation.

Driven by various forces such as policies, in recent years, China's chemical digitization process has been installed on the "accelerator", and a large number of chemical enterprises have intensively launched various software systems.

Looking at the digital path of various chemical enterprises, it can be found that there are roughly four models:

1. Policy-driven digitization

The digitalization of many enterprises is urgently launched with the policy promotion in recent years, not so much for the transformation and upgrading of enterprises, but rather in response to policy supervision.

Especially after the release of the "Industrial Internet + Safety Production" action plan (2021-2023) last year, chemical production is often in high temperature and pressure, vacuum, flammable, toxic and other high-risk environments, in case of safety accidents, the harm is extremely serious, and it has become the top priority of the digital construction of safety production.

The General Office of the Ministry of Emergency Management issued the pilot construction plan of "Industrial Internet + Hazardous Production Safety" (that is, "No. 27"), and the provincial emergency management offices also issued a series of documents for chemical production safety...

For a time, the EHS team of a large number of chemical enterprises was pushed to the forefront, and a variety of safety production software was urgently launched.

Such digital projects, hastily launched in response to regulation, lack research and pilots, and the suitability of the software is difficult to guarantee. After the deployment of the system, there is no enthusiasm to promote the use of management, and how much effect can be more difficult to say.