…and so are the projects
I was looking at the latest VCI information and they painted a very positive picture for the German Chemical Industry.
“Business was strong with industrial customers in Germany and resulted in a high sales level for the German chemical industry in early 2014. In comparison with the previous year, the chemical companies recorded a marked production increase by 4.2 percent in the first quarter. Sales in the same period improved by 5 percent to 46.8 billion euros against the previous year.”
If you step back and review this against the GDP growth in general for Germany (2.5%) it shows that the Chemical Industry is leading the charge for the German economy. Currently Germany has one of the strongest EU growths (with the UK at 3.2%), most other countries are under 1% with some still see contraction (like Finland). Considering that the German Chemical industry revenue is higher than the GDP of a number of EU countries (admittedly Bulgaria, Estonia, Latvia, Malta etc) when our industry grows, it is something to pay attention to.
So is this good news, well yes if you are a chemical company (or shareholder) ………… but maybe not if you are a chemical Customer Services Representative, or Supply Chain Manager. As growth comes through, the headaches start to creep in. Headaches like, how do you manage 5% growth with the same people, the same infrastructure and the same number of chemical rated trucks on the road? How do you manage growth when German legislation is coming in saying you have to capture the Gelangensbestätigung (Confirmation of Arrival). You can manage this by upping the painkillers (which indirectly helps the chemical industry) or you can realise this is where automation comes to the rescue. As we all know, automation allows for companies to process more, control more and collaborate more ……. without adding a huge number of resources.
I would often follow this up with a call to arms, to do new projects and to work with Elemica. This time I am not, because most companies are ahead of the curve ……… you are already doing it, we have seen a constant growth of projects coming in to the Elemica Business Process Solutions team. Just a few over the last six months would include;
- Pan EMEA road logistics automation
- Confirmation of Arrivals project
- Inbound slot booking at production sites
- Analysis of ocean shipment data for container tracking
- Road logistics in China
- Supplier raw material ordering in the UK
- Connecting top X customers through various processes (VMI, delivery schedules, O2I)
- Certificate of Analysis automation into Quality systems
Also, these are not small pilots or folks dipping their toes in the water. These are a quarter of a million of road shipments, or a hundred thousand CoA’s, or supplier on-boardings projects from fifty mission critical raw material suppliers all the way up to five thousand direct material suppliers.
So if I did have a message to my architect peers doing solution design inside Chemical companies I would say, start talking to the business people at the coal face, the ones who are seeing the efforts raise and are worried about hitting a productivity glass ceiling. They will tell you what needs to be improved, I can then work with you to craft that solution that will optimise part of the supply chain, so you can keep your heads above water until the next 5% growth (or the next automation project comes along).