In an era defined by rapid technological advancements, the chemical industry is looking at transformation to unlock new levels of quality and efficiency. The ability to monitor processes in real-time, predict equipment failures, and optimize production has transitioned from being a futuristic ideal to an industry standard. However, many companies still face challenges in integrating these technologies into existing operations. 

In this context, the leading experts recently spoke at the panel discussion on 'Maximizing Quality & Efficiency – The Digital Blueprint for Chemical Companies' at the CIO Connect 2024 organized by Indian Chemical News (ICN) on November 29, 2024 in Mumbai. The discussion was moderated by Pravin Prashant, Executive Editor, ICN.

Themed ‘Connected Chemical Plant and Industry 4.0’ the CIO Connect 2024 was held in association with AVEVA and Grassdoor.

Sharing his thoughts on his company’s journey so far, Pushkar Rege, Global CIO, UPL said, “The digital blueprint is never static in the chemical industry due to uncertainty emerging out of China and global recession. UPL has a vast footprint in the manufacturing setup with more than 45 factories and 20 of them are based here. At UPL, our true journey on the blueprint started in early 2023. In this two year journey, we have set right goals and have been focusing more on our growth driven by technology. Cost is one factor but it's also the safety. We are very proud to be one of the safest plants to work with.”  

Elaborating on how digital implementation benefited his company, Deepak Keni, EVP – Digital, Strategy and Transformation, DFPCL said: “We have four manufacturing group companies including Deepak Fertilizers. We have been into the expansion of our core manufacturing process since 2018. We started the journey in 2018. The blueprint that we set up as a part of the business goals is as such that we are 3X of our revenue which we had in 2018. We have been into the expansion of our core manufacturing process since 2018. We wanted to maximize the output from old plants as these were constantly breaking down or shutting down. Each organization has got its own unique blueprint that suits its requirements. It has to be defined if better ROI is being expected.” 

Sharing his perspective on the industry trends, Devendra Koppikar, Associate IT Director, Dow Chemical International (Dow India) said, “We have more than 50 plus manufacturing plants globally. In India, we have three manufacturing plants. We have a Central Engineering Center which actually does the designing for most of the plants abroad as well. For the way ahead, I would classify the most common things as people, process and technology.  In today's world, there is so much availability of technology and we have to focus on asset reliability and utilization; top down integration; integration with the ERP and MES and so on. Safety has been the biggest by-product of technology like the safe working permit. If you digitize it, apart from making it efficient, it also makes it reliable and safe.” 

Vinay Morje, Senior Vice President & Head - Digital Transformation, Grasim Industries Pulp & Fibre said, “Grasim, as an Indian company, has a global footprint. We manufacture staple fibre for garments. Most of the global brands are our customers. We have manufacturing facilities for fibre in India and South East Asia and pulp mills in Sweden and Canada.  In India, we have around 90 to 95% of market share and globally and we have just one competitor. So we don't have any benchmarks in this industry. We started our journey with digitize, digitalize and digital transformation. These are the three steps that we have taken and we also followed the four pieces of digital transformation, which is people, process, product and platforms. In terms of digitalize and digitize, our focus internally has been to leverage digital for improving quality and reliability, reducing cost, safety and sustainability.” 

Partha Sur, Sr. General Manager – Technology, Haldia Petrochemicals said: “We hear how Chat GPT 4.5 has an intelligence quotient of 155. It is moving so fast that in just another one or two years down, we will see that most of the things will be under this umbrella. We have to keep ready and have the right kind of mindset. However, it won’t be so easy because the companies that are going to come up now will be having a different perspective, technology, and understanding all together. Comparatively, the 30-40 years old company will have legacy systems and these can’t really reach there overnight. At Haldia, we have learned fast and have been doing it over the years. We have to blend the human intelligence with human centric approach and resilience to be sustainable.” 

Sharing a realistic perspective on implementing digital solutions, Naveen Kumar, Vice President, Chemicals, Natural Resources and Manufacturing, AVEVA said: “Implementing static blueprints is impractical as it becomes obsolete by the time we finish implementing these. We work closely with our customers to help them with their blueprint during their journey successfully. This would mean course correction and bringing multiple product solutions, implementing solutions that are appealing to the next generation. Another aspect is about sharing our global experience with the customers in India as well as how we can apply the learning from one industry into another. Again predictive analytics by itself is not a solution as whenever you find a failure, it won’t work. We have to work with people on combining predictive analytics with our simulation technology to use simulation as a soft sensor to predict an efficiency curve and using that to identify a possible problem.”  

Explaining the bottlenecks encountered by the companies, Prasanna Wadke, Head Digital, Rallis India said: “When a company decides to take the plunge towards Industry 4.0, it has to first find out where to begin. There are many players who have implemented digital technologies without any success. Therefore, whenever they encounter a lot of problems, finding the right intervention is critical. To begin the digital journey, companies have to segregate the problems which need to be sorted through physics or chemistry intervention and data intervention. Companies have to find out the value of doing this particular exercise be it automation or infrastructure and if it is feasible enough or too much expensive. At our end, we are doing discovery value assessment through six sigma. The automatic six sigma to find out whether for that particular use case we have the right set of data and whether we can capture the data. Putting sensor, PLS, DCS system and controlling data and pushing it to the historian data is the key.”