Dow is reaping the advantages of a year-long program to roll out new digital applied sciences to one in all its largest manufacturing websites, leading to enhancements in efficiency, reliability, and worker expertise.
It’s over 5 years since Dow Chemical merged with DuPont to kind DowDuPont — and three since they break up up once more to kind a brand new agricultural provides firm, Corteva; a specialist chemical compounds producer, Dupont; and a provider of commodity chemical compounds, Dow.
Melanie Kalmar was Dow’s CIO by means of all of that. “It was one of many largest spinouts ever that I’m conscious of, and it was probably the most advanced initiatives I’ve labored on,” she says.“ As we spun out as a brand new firm, we additionally needed to be a extra digital Dow.
But it surely’s not about being digital for its personal sake: “It’s about altering how folks do their work to be simpler, extra environment friendly, and to drive progress for the corporate by with the ability to deal with increased worth actions,” she says.
One of many first fruits of that new method was a program to get IT out of the workplace and speed up the deployment of digital applied sciences throughout manufacturing and upkeep areas. It’s a challenge that has earned Dow a CIO 100 Award for IT innovation and management.
The aim was to enhance the productiveness, security and reliability of producing “belongings” — Dow’s time period for the huge expanses of concrete and metal and the sprawling outside networks of pipes and controls that characterize its manufacturing amenities.
Melanie Kalmar
“It actually all begins from a drive to be probably the most dependable provider in our business,” she says. That’s an enormous deal for Dow’s clients after two years of lockdowns, employee shortages, excessive climate occasions and different provide chain disruptions.
Fairly than start with a small website as a pilot, Kalmar and colleagues went massive — 7,000 acres massive — selecting Dow’s largest manufacturing website in Freeport, Texas, for his or her first deployment.
“We needed to point out the payback of doing one thing like this, and should you go to a smaller website, you’re going to get a smaller payback,” she says.
On a website like Freeport, says Kalmar, a lot of the staff can be discovered within the management room, monitoring which valves are opening and shutting from a dashboard. Beforehand, in the event that they needed to exit to carry out upkeep, or do a spherical of bodily checks, they’d stroll forwards and backwards between the belongings and the management room to choose up work orders or print off documentation. Now, they entry that info in a safe cloud by way of a safety-hardened machine linked to a site-wide non-public 4G wi-fi community.
“We’ve put all that info at their fingertips now on these cellular gadgets,” she says. “The velocity to keep up, right or repair one thing out within the plant has super impression on the general reliability.” The staff are ecstatic about it as properly, having what they want on website instantly and and never having to print paper, particularly if it’s raining or if it’s windy and the papers are blowing round,” Kalmar says.
IT employees who’ve struggled to tug Ethernet cables by means of ducts throughout an workplace or perhaps a small manufacturing facility will perceive the enchantment of wi-fi on a website the dimensions of Freeport — however Kalmar says it has its personal challenges: “At a producing website, you don’t simply go in with a backhoe and dig anyplace to place a pole up. All that planning and execution was very new for my group.”
This could have been a troublesome endeavor in a number of firms, the place IT and operations know-how (OT) organizations don’t work collectively, however that’s not the case at Dow, says Kalmar.
“One of many early issues I did was accomplice with the VP of producing,” she says. “We agreed that we might do that higher for Dow if our groups work collectively.”
A part of Dow’s largest manufacturing website in Freeport, Texas.
Key to that collaboration, she says, was recognizing that it wasn’t about studying each other’s abilities however leveraging them: collaborate, however depart sure duties to the consultants.
“We’ve gone by means of the entire RACI course of and recognized who’s accountable, who’s accountable, for all elements of what occurs with know-how at our websites. Now we have a a lot stronger partnership by working by means of that collectively, and are even profession ladders throughout the 2 organizations.”
Such department-spanning profession ladders exist already in different specialist areas at Dow, equivalent to knowledge science, the place consultants may discover themselves working in IT, manufacturing, R&D or provide chain administration. “You’ve simply received to get in there and begin breaking down these silos which have traditionally and historically existed throughout organizations,” she says. “If every part you do is pushed by bettering the client and worker expertise, these alternatives actually begin presenting themselves. It’s actually modified the mindset for us at Dow.”
There are nonetheless boundaries, nonetheless. Manufacturing, for instance, continues to be answerable for the management methods that run the manufacturing belongings, though IT is beginning to get extra concerned within the community these management methods run on, she says.
The IT group additionally needed to ability up for the challenge, including cloud, networking, and safety experience.
The most important want, although, was for change administration abilities. Kalmar expanded her management group to incorporate somebody particularly accountable for enterprise change. Their remit included figuring out who to onboard first to drive adoption slightly than merely provide coaching on the brand new methods. “Who has cycles in our run-the-business group to even devour and settle for this new stuff when it comes out?” Kalmar says. “We’re change very otherwise.”
Able to step as much as 5G
For now, Dow’s non-public wi-fi community makes use of LTE, a 4G know-how, however it will likely be prepared for 5G when 5G is prepared for it.
“All people’s overrated about 5G networks, however you must have gadgets and purposes that work on 5G, so we’re not going to leap there but — however we’ll be ready to go there and make that change. The infrastructure that we’ve put in place will be capable of transition to 5G,” she says.
Utilizing an older and slower wi-fi know-how hasn’t damage the challenge, although. In response to Dow, greater than 3,600 staff have been educated on the brand new instruments, enabling them to carry out in lower than a minute data-related duties that after took half an hour or extra.
In deploying to a large website equivalent to Freeport, says Kalmar, it’s vital to acknowledge early on that one-size-fits-all options don’t all the time work, and to spend time up-front talking with colleagues and getting the precise inputs. “Regulate your conventional program method and be open to large-scale pilot implementations,” she says. “Be taught as you go, talk your wins, and proceed to hearken to your stakeholders.”
