By: Rahul Koul
Last updated : July 06, 2025 4:03 pm
Experts highlight data relevance, leadership buy-in, and workforce readiness as key enablers of Industry 4.0 in chemicals and petrochemicals
Industry 4.0 is emerging as a game-changer, driving smarter operations, faster decision-making, and greater efficiency. Experts stress that success hinges not just on technology, but on aligning data with business value, securing leadership commitment, and empowering the workforce on the ground.
The topic was discussed intensely at the first session of 5th edition of the NextGen Chemicals and Petrochemicals Summit 2025 themed ‘Preparing for the future' in Mumbai on June 18-19, 2025.
The session titled ‘Digital Transformation: Adoption of Industry 4.0 in Chemicals & Petrochemicals’ was moderated by Pravin Prashant, Executive Editor, Indian Chemical News.
Bhanu Gupta, Vice President - Digital & Analytics, DCM Shriram Ltd. shared that nearly a year ago, the company initiated its digital transformation journey with a clear focus on creating real business value and not adopting digital tools for the sake of it.
“In the chemical industry, full-scale digital adoption is still evolving. For us, digitalisation had to be purpose-driven. The shop floor should visibly reflect this shift, with dashboards and real-time insights, We explored the AI models to create a few business solutions. When we started with digitalisation, we had four pillars. First was value delivery and impact on EBITDA. We identified 26 use cases that could bring value across verticals. We used the data from our plants and created models. We looked at processes and optimised the model. We looked at incorporating various automation set up for logistics and safety to do the value delivery. Then second was people and capability. We set up a Centre for Excellence where we onboarded qualified professionals for analysing the data and building new models. Data tech means you have to have some mechanism of capturing the data with direct communication between DCS and field instruments and finally historians. Besides infrastructure, there is governance infrastructure. We have set up a governance model and KPIs. It’s a journey and we started with few aspirations that we have been regularly ensuring we move as per the plan.”
Devendra Koppikar, Associate IT Director, Dow Chemical International Pvt. Ltd. emphasized that Dow’s digital transformation is centered around enhancing the customer journey—making it seamless, enjoyable, and effective.
“From a digital standpoint, our objective is to make the customers’ journey easy, enjoyable and effective. Leveraging the digital solutions to make the transformation is our motto. We have six pillars in our digital journey. First is collaboration where we need to have realtime, seamless and end to end collaborations. Second is processes as typically in the chemical industry; these are complex and we need to simplify, standardize the processes. Third is technology and it is important to have resilient infrastructure but in addition you need to have an enterprise that is intelligent and connected. Fourth one is data and our objective is to transform the data into a competitive advantage. Fifth one is skills and as the world is changing, it is about becoming skilled as per today’s requirements. Sixth one is the culture which acts as a glue that holds it all together and it should encourage digital thinking and new ways of working. In terms of our current status, we are far ahead in all of these six pillars. For data, we have a data literacy programme to help understand the depth of data. We have been awarded for our architecture which is called Integrated Data Hub. It is not just a data warehousing solution that is about collecting data but also has a cataloguing and provides role based accesses. From a process standpoint, most of us use robotic process automation. On the customer side, our commercially customer facing products are doing well and there is more and more adoption of digital happening already. In our B2B, 50-60% of our orders are coming through digital channels.”
Krishnakumar Pandey, Head - IT, Epsilon Carbon Pvt. Ltd. informed that the company began its digital transformation journey two years ago, structured around two key phases.
“We started our digital transformation journey two years ago and it has got two components. We started with the data and focused on master data management. In the first year, we faced challenges in terms of digitalisation as a lot of records were not available as it was on paper and scattered. This has driven ten plus initiatives for digitalisation whether it was manufacturing processes or sales processes and we also focused on automating some of the invoice processing as well. The second year we focused on improving the manufacturing yields or reducing the cost for manufacturing. That is where we had implemented SAP C4C which has helped us to connect with our customers and we had put an automated logistics tool to track the consignment which is going to the customer. We knew that there would be significant effort required for the change management and therefore, it was a good support from the top management to drive this cultural transformation so that we become a data driven organisation rather than a gut based or intuition based company. We have trained our people and worked on a startup model to accelerate our journey towards digital transformation.”
Anamika, GM - ERP Digital Applications, Hindustan Petroleum Corporation Ltd. shared that the company’s digital transformation journey began nearly six years ago with the launch of Project Parikalp, underpinned by a clearly defined digital and IT strategy.
“We devised a digital strategy and an IS strategy. We had certain recommendations initially that were implemented during the last few years. In the beginning, we had 6-7 digital initiatives out of which most have been implemented except two, one being enterprise data repository and analytics and another is predictive maintenance. Going further as and when the new digital technologies have emerged, we have tried to implement them. We have worked on robotic process automation where we touched almost all the departments. We have already rolled out 41 processes and many more are in progress. Then we have also worked on Generative AI with purchase of a centralized platform and use cases being built on it. Before that we have worked on Extended Reality and GPTs. Going forward, we are expected to reach 4 TB of data by 2027. We have other enablers for upcoming technologies tender and commercial evaluation. We have customer engagement platforms and chatbots. As this is an ongoing journey we will utilise all the latest technologies for the benefit of our customers and help our organisation to grow further.”
Gaurav Vyas, Lead Strategy - Director’s office/AVP, Reliance Industries Ltd. spoke on how the digital transformation at Reliance spans across all operational areas, from refining to marketing.
"What sets us apart is our focus on adopting cutting-edge technologies at optimal costs, while simultaneously indigenizing them. We provide data storage and a lot many other services. We aspire to have a fully connected agile human led system but at an optimal cost and on our own. Another thing that separates us from others is that we have no issues in leveraging the ecosystem and we don’t hold any bars in collaborating with others or even holding joint IPs. When we do our POCs we do in our own O2C lab facilities. As an example we did one blind video project where we used our own 5G network and cameras. I am proud to say that it is India’s lowest network cost in terms of network and camera cost. Secondly, what differentiates us in terms of manufacturing is that we have a clear boundary in terms of what we should be doing and what we shouldn’t be doing. Thirdly, when we tie up with Microsoft or other companies, we get GPOs at lower cost which is due to our investment in the ecosystem that has helped. From AIML, advanced analytics to agentic AI, from transformation of operations, HR and finances to creating a single source of truth or having a visualisation layer which is role based or persona based. In terms of POCs, we have done a lot of these but the challenge is to do it at an optimal cost.”
Dr Pratap Nair, Founder, President & CEO, Ingenero emphasized that their experience of working with several companies has revealed a common challenge, ensuring that digital or transformation initiatives are clearly aligned with tangible business value.
"It's not about how much data you collect, but about how relevant that data is to the problem you're trying to solve. There is a critical importance of leadership commitment in driving such initiatives. Support must come from the top, but successful implementation ultimately depends on engaging the people who operate on the shop floor. This means organizations must invest in proper hand holding, training, and change management to ensure frontline teams not only adopt but also understand the value of new systems or processes. Beyond just calculating return on investment, there is a need to understand the significance of utilisation in terms of how effectively the implemented solutions are actually being used. A combination of AI technologies is necessary for most process manufacturing applications”, ranging from planning and optimization, prediction and forecasting, operations decision intelligence to closed loop implementation systems.”
The 5th edition of NextGen Chemicals and Petrochemicals Summit 2025 themed ‘Preparing for the future' witnessed massive attendance by leading industry experts and stakeholders from pan India. The 12 sessions at the two-day event were attended by a total of 85 speakers and more than 500 delegates.
The Country Partner of the event was Flanders Investment & Trade. The State Partner was Andhra Pradesh Economic Development Board (EDB). The Principal Partner was DCM Shriram Chemicals. The Gold Partners included Revvity Signals, Ingenero, Tubacex, GloGreen, BTG (A Voith company), Gujarat Fluorochemicals, Excel Industries, Epsilon Carbon, Aquapharm, HPCL, BPCL, and WoodField.
The Associate Partners were Zodiac Tank Container Terminals, ReGreen Excel and AnalytikJena. The Supporting Partner was Archroma.
Industry Association Partners of the event included AMAI, CropLife, Gujarat Chemical Association, and Agro Chem Federation of India.