The excitement and engagement about the term digital transformation in the chemical industry is becoming greater and greater. This process is having a significant effect on several areas including production, research and development, marketing and sales, amongst others. Targeted development processes are accelerated by effective data collection and the design of database systems, just to name a few changes.
Joerg will highlight the basis for this hype, share his insights and his personal experience as Chief Digital Officer. He will outline the impact of digital transformation at LANXESS in general and describe beside others how the company is dealing with New Business models based on the example of building a B2B online marketplace for the chemical industry.
Furthermore digital transformation requires the adjustment of qualification - from job profiles to contribution profiles. Given that interdisciplinary approaches are becoming more important than ever and skills in the area of both data science and domain knowledge are sought after more and more, Joerg will speak about the skill set of talents, their future perspectives and valuable assets for graduating students in the chemical industry.
Most likely the current university education does not prepare prospective chemists and chemical engineers for the challenges of digitalization. Thus Chemical Invention Factory, TU Berlin native chemistry start-up DexLeChem and LANXESS introduce the course “Data Analytics für Chemieingenieure und Chemiker” at TU Berlin. This compulsory course is scheduled for the upcoming Winter Term 2019/2020. The course instructor, Tino Mundt, will give an overview of the integrated course that teaches the basics of data analytics such as programming in Python, statistics and the data science process, as well as the fundamentals of digitalization. It will be a hands-on course which gives students the skills to solve data analytics problems and work on digitalization projects in chemical industry.
About Joerg Hellwig
Joerg began his career as a commercial trainee at Bayer AG. After spending several years in the US, he returned to LANXESS in Germany to restructure and sell its Synthetic Fibers business. Following an assignment at Reliance Industries in India, he came back as Managing Director of the Pigment business unit at LANXESS. Since 2017 Joerg has led the company’s Digital Transformation Initiative as Chief Digital Officer. The process focus areas include the digitization of production, the introduction of new tools and systems throughout the value chain, promoting the value of data as an institutional asset for the entire company, and the use of advanced analytics such as artificial intelligence to increase the speed of development. Joerg also leads the “New Work” cultural transformation program to support the skill and talent necessary for the transition to a digital organization. As a champion of new technologies at the company, Joerg is also responsible for exploring new business models. As such, he founded the start-up software company CheMondis and served as Managing Director and Supervisory Board member. CheMondis, now independent, has quickly become the leading online marketplace for the chemicals industry.
About LANXESS
LANXESS is a leading specialty chemicals company with sales of EUR 7.2 billion in 2018. The company currently has about 15,400 employees in 33 countries and is represented at 60 production sites worldwide. The core business of LANXESS is the development, manufacturing and marketing of chemical intermediates, additives, specialty chemicals and plastics. LANXESS is listed in the leading sustainability indices Dow Jones Sustainability Index (DJSI World and Europe) and FTSE4Good.
About Tino Mundt
Tino Mundt studied Industrial Engineering at TU Berlin with a strong focus on Chemical and Process Engineering. After studying for two semesters at National University of Singapore and working as a student lab instructor at the Chair of Chemical and Process Engineering of Matthias Kraume, he joined DexLeChem after finishing his master’s degree. At DexLeChem he works for clients from all fields of the chemical industry bringing digitalization into the production sites and optimizing chemical production processes.
About DexLeChem
DexLeChem is a spin-off of the German Cluster of Excellence in Catalysis (former UniSysCat). They are a small but mighty team which is dedicated to fulfill their mission: Based on the 12 Principles of Green Chemistry they aim to build a green chemical industry. In order to achieve this goal, DexLeChem is offering various technical services that help to reduce or reuse expensive resources in the production of chemicals and pharmaceuticals. DexLeChem believes that digitalization can be an integral tool for the implementation of greener, more sustainable production processes.
More information can be found HERE