Industries
4 Keys to Staying Competitive in Today’s Challenging Manufacturing Environment
Monday, 11 January 2021 (Source: IndustryWeek)
A Change is happening faster than most manufacturers can hope to keep up with. Globalization, tariff wars, and the COVID-19 pandemic are all increasing the risks of disruption to supply chains, markets, and skilled labor. Manufacturers need better strategies to adapt to changes more quickly and achieve greater ability to adjust, or even completely reinvent, business models and processes.
The following are four recommendations around developing a digital transformation strategy to succeed in today’s fastchanging world:
1. ADOPT A CLOUD-FIRST STRATEGY
Innovation, speed, and agility are crucial to thriving in the current manufacturing environment. By transforming with cloud-based solutions, manufacturers can eliminate the costs and overhead of managing on-premises systems that tie up capital and are difficult to update.
2. BECOME A DATA-DRIVEN ENTERPRISE
In today’s environment, manufacturers must be nimble enough to respond to and even predict rapidly changing market conditions. To accomplish this, manufacturers need to leverage real-time data, predictive analytics, and automation to drive business efficiencies, lower costs, reduce downtime, and increase productivity and quality.
3. LEVERAGE A DIGITAL THREAD FOR INNOVATION
Innovation can be speedier and continuous when a manufacturer is able to leverage a connected data flow across every aspect of a product’s lifecycle from initial concept to design and manufacture, through sales and distribution, customer utilization, and servicing. This creates a digital thread throughout the manufacturing enterprise to enable a unified, holistic view of the business that includes development, supply chain, manufacturing, finance, sales, and support.
4. BUILD SUPPLY CHAIN RESILIENCY
In today’s environment, manufacturing success requires quicker adaptation to difficult-to-predict, fast-changing business conditions. Resiliency and agility have never been more important, so more companies are focusing less on pure cost savings and more on adaptability, speed, risk reduction, and sustainability. So, more companies are focusing less on pure cost savings and more on adaptability, speed, risk reduction, and sustainability.
What to Expect from the Chemicals Industry – Pricing Trends & Predictions 2020
Monday, 17 February 2020
According to the CEFIC “European Chemical Industry Council”, after a 1% drop in 2019, European chemical production is expected to show no growth in 2020 due to its manufacturing sector being so vulnerable to the economic slowdown.
The declining economic growth in Germany could have continent-wide knock-on effects. According to the VIC “German Chemical Industry Association”, the region’s chemical industry is expected to grow by just 0.5% in 2020 (after a 7.5% drop in production in 2018 to 2019).
Meanwhile, Brexit divorce terms are yet to be settled and could lead to new tariffs, import delays and chemical regulatory compliance issues, encouraging companies to take their business to continental Europe.
Such volatility in the market will require pricing to be updated frequently to mitigate cost risks.
Siegwerk opens Europe's largest fully automated production plant for printing inks
Friday, 20 December 2019
Siegwerk, a supplier of printing inks for packaging applications and labels, has opened a new fully automated system for the production of customer inks at its headquarters in Siegburg.
DIC acquire BASF’s global pigments business
Friday, 30 August 2019
The fine chemical company DIC have reached an agreement on the acquisition of BASF’s global pigments business.
The purchase price on a cash and debt-free basis is 1.15 billion Euro. The transaction is expected to close in the fourth quarter of 2020. The divestiture is subject to the approval of the relevant competition authorities.
Brenntag acquires remaining shares in Crest Chemicals
Tuesday, 20 August 2019
Brenntag acquires remaining 50 percent of the shares in South African distributor Crest Chemicals.
Brenntag announced the acquisition of the remaining 50 percent of the shares in Crest Chemicals Proprietary Limited ("Crest”), South Africa, from the AECI Limited ("AECI”, JSE AFE) Group of companies. Crest has been a 50:50 joint venture between Brenntag and AECI since 2001.
Brenntag announced the acquisition of the remaining 50 percent of the shares in Crest Chemicals Proprietary Limited ("Crest”), South Africa, from the AECI Limited ("AECI”, JSE AFE) Group of companies. Crest has been a 50:50 joint venture between Brenntag and AECI since 2001.
EU Court confirms classification of bisphenol A
Thursday, 18 July 2019 (Source: European Coatings)
The court of the European Union has confirmed in a recent ruling that bisphenol A must be classified as a substance of very high concern. The Luxembourg judges dismissed a complaint by the PlasticsEurope plastics association.
In its ruling, the court found that a substance used as an isolated intermediate on site or as a transported isolated intermediate is not automatically exempted from all provisions of the REACH regulation. Such substances, such as Bisphenol A (BPA), are therefore not exempted from the labelling requirements. As the Court explains in its explanatory memorandum, the Regulation does not exclude that a substance may be classified as of very high concern although it is only used as an isolated intermediate. Renuva™, a circular economy program in collaboration with the value-chain.
Evonik and Evolve Collaborate on 3D Printing Materials
Wednesday, May 29, 2019
Companies to enhance material development for selective thermoplastic electrophotographic process (STEP) to offer a wider range of thermoplastic material for production of additive manufacturing applications.
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