Putting Users First with Advanced Analytics

Arkema creates user-friendly environment from its own feedback

Putting Advanced Analytics Users First

Arkema creates user-friendly environment from its own feedback

About Arkema

Building on its unique set of expertise in materials science, Arkema designs materials to address the ever-growing demand for innovative and sustainable materials. Its people are driven by the challenges of new energies, new technologies, the depletion of resources, mobility, and increasing urbanization.

The group is structured into three coherent and complementary segments dedicated to Specialty Materials (Adhesive Solutions, Advanced Materials, and Coating Solutions). This account for 85.5% of sales. The group also has an Intermediates segment that leverages competitive and global product lines.

Sustained by the collective energy of its 20,200 employees, Arkema operates in about 55 countries and reports sales of €9.5 billion.

Their Digitalization Journey

Arkema wanted to build a digital strategy with four specific outcomes: manage industrial performance quickly; position the human role all along the value chain; optimize the asset lifecycle; and develop agility of all assets during production. In short, they wanted to build a “factory of the future.” Because of TrendMiner’s commitment to democratize data for everyone in an organization, Arkema chose it to be a digital partner. One of Arkema’s challenges was the ability to share knowledge with other TrendMiner users throughout one plant or across multiple sites. The specialty materials company sent out surveys to ask users what they needed. With those results, it created a website specifically for all TrendMiner users so they could connect with those more familiar with the software’s capabilities and search for use cases to match their specific situation. Now, with a combination of strategies to help close a mindset gap, process experts at Arkema have fully embraced TrendMiner to make daily data-driven decisions.

Use Case: Gaining Time Profit

In responses to user surveys, Nina MAS SOLER saw a wide range of use cases for different plant personas. She created a website to collect and share these use cases with other TrendMiner users and other departments. One of the embedded apps finds use cases that will match user situation. The other lets them connect with a key TrendMiner power user.

Nina said with the company’s adoption of TrendMiner, data is democratized not only across the plants, but across locations. Operational experts are empowered to collaborate and solve more problems quicker, not only because of the availability of the data, but because of a wealth of resources that may be applicable to their specific problem.

“According to our surveys, the value behind TrendMiner is the time profit and time gained,” she said. “Each of our users think that TrendMiner is powerful, and that they can use it to find what they want. Furthermore, it’s the way they get more insight about the processes.”

Benefits

Since adopting TrendMiner, Arkema has been able to share use cases for industrial analytics across departments and locations. With TrendMiner, Arkema has been able to:

Optimize production with a wide range of use cases

Improve collaboration among its software uses

Share knowledge about solutions throughout the organization

Demystify industrial analytics for operational experts

Democratize data across its entire organization

Customer Presentation

In this 2021 TrendLab presentation, Laurent BASEILHAC and Nina MAS SOLER presented Arkema’s vision of the “factory of the future,” and will encourage users to dream big and reach for their goals. For their presentation, Laurent and Nina won the 2021 TrendMiner of the Year award.

Laurent walks you through Arkema’s priorities for digital manufacturing after a brief introduction. Then, Nina shares the company’s strategy for the implementation and adoption of TrendMiner through user network diversity. The session will demonstrate the importance of developing a community strategy to ensure an effective and sustainable digital transformation.

Nina spoke to TrendMiner after the annual event about the program she helped develop. She provided insight on what it takes to drive user adoption, and even some pointers on winning TrendMiner of the Year.

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