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.

On the surface, the digital construction is effective, but it is actually a waste of funds and manpower, buried hidden dangers, and dampened the digital confidence of enterprises.

2. Follow the trend of digitalization

Chinese enterprises have no shortage of initiatives for digital transformation.

According to a survey of nearly 500 process companies by Process Industries magazine last year, nearly 90% of them have already started digital-related work, and nearly half of them have digital transformation as one of their major strategies.

There are many "lighthouse enterprises" in the digital transformation of the chemical industry, and so many enterprises such as BASF and Wanhua Chemical continue to expand their market advantages through digitalization, and most enterprises are aware of the value of digitalization.

Even without policy drivers, many companies are jumping on the bandwagon and preparing for digital transformation.

The problem is that some companies only know why, but not why.

Or hold high the strategic banner of digital transformation, but lack of landing action; Or splurge on software deployments that misinterpret digitalization as tool upgrades; Or think of one is one, urgent online digitization, eager to see the digital results immediately...

3. Digitization from the top down

The digitization of chemical enterprises is not achieved overnight, from a large level, it includes marketing digitization, management digitization, production digitization, involving all aspects of enterprise production and operation.

All the enterprises that have achieved remarkable results in digital transformation at home and abroad have long-term digital strategies and clear digital deployment strategies, from pilot to popularization, and gradually upgrade their existing businesses with digital concepts, tools and methods.

Wanhua Chemical's digital transformation path is typical.

As the world's largest MDI supplier, Wanhua Chemical knows the importance of digitalization and has been continuously promoting enterprise automation and digital upgrading.

Wanhua Chemical has built a series of information systems such as MES, ERP, BW and OA. In recent years, Wanhua has once again led the industrial 4.0 transformation of chemical enterprises and actively used digital technology to promote industrial change.

After a comprehensive evaluation, in 2017, Wanhua decided to take Ningbo Wanhua Base as a pilot to deploy the industrial wisdom Road operation management system and digitally upgrade the traditional operation management method.

Then, in 2018, Wanhua set up the Group Information Strategy Committee to carry out the overall planning and overall promotion of the enterprise's digital transformation.

At the same time, Ningbo Wanhua once again deployed the business data center to open up the scattered data of various internal systems through the industrial wisdom Road, providing efficient data integration, processing and presentation tools for production technicians, and facilitating production optimization and management decisions based on data analysis and mining.

Today, Wanhua's digital transformation has achieved remarkable results, and its digital construction will continue to deepen under the guidance of a unified strategy, and gradually build a world-class digital enterprise with intelligent manufacturing, global integrated management and control, and efficient cooperation in the ecosystem as the main characteristics.

Digitisation is a win for the long-termists.

4. Bottom-up digitization

Let the person who can hear the gunfire make the decision.

Many first-line teams and middle and grass-roots managers of chemical enterprises personally feel the backwardness of their work and the necessity of digital upgrading, and their teams take the lead in trying to digitize, and then gradually promote the digitalization of the entire company from the bottom up.

This bottom-up digitization has low trial and error cost, fast deployment, and high acceptance by front-line employees, so the company should try its best to give support. If a mature digital sample is produced, it is easy to quickly promote to the whole industry line and the whole group.

This is equivalent to the digitalization pilot work that enterprises spend a lot of energy to promote in top-down digitalization.