Multinational companies compete for digitalization

Digitalization and artificial intelligence technologies are increasingly being used by the chemical industry
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Since the outbreak of the new crown pneumonia epidemic, multinational chemical companies have increased their investment in this area due to the impact of on-site offices

Carry out extensive external cooperation

Carry out extensive external cooperation Carry out extensive external cooperation

Multinational companies attach great importance to the continuous development and update of digital technology in recent years and continue to use them
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Many multinational companies have specialized departments for research and external cooperation

Melanie Kalmar, Dow’s vice president, chief information officer and chief digital officer, said: “We are re-architecting and re-wiring the enterprise to take full advantage of digital technology to accelerate the realization of our business results
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” Artificial intelligence involves Dow’s The "set of capabilities" applied in many of its processes can improve the speed and quality of decision-making

Nikoloas Fanidakis, chief data scientist at BASF, said that for the chemical industry, digitalization will be a decisive competitive factor
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Artificial intelligence has the potential to reduce operating costs, increase efficiency, ensure production reliability, improve and develop new products, and improve customer experience

Value the potential of artificial intelligence

Pay attention to the potential of artificial intelligence

The reason why multinational companies attach importance to artificial intelligence is that artificial intelligence has the potential to subvert the current form of research and development in the chemical industry and promote the development of the entire chemical industry
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Kalmar said that the predictive intelligence technology the company is developing combines Dow’s material science, reaction kinetics, and rheology expertise with artificial intelligence technology, which can fundamentally improve the product formulation development process and accelerate differentiated solutions.
Time to market of the solution
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Using predictive intelligence technology and simulating formula reactions under processing conditions can shorten the product development process, reduce traditional laboratory experiments and production experiments, and make cooperation more efficient

Shi Ruian, Dow’s senior vice president and chief technology officer in charge of global research and development, said that the company is using a research method called high-throughput research (HTR) combined with high-performance computing (HPC) to reduce errors , Increase the experimental efficiency by 10 to 100 times, and increase the commercialization speed of products for Dow customers by 2 to 3 times
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　　Fanidakis pointed out that artificial intelligence supports BASF's research and development by connecting different data sources and analyzing complex data types such as images and text information
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BASF uses computer vision technology to use digital images from cameras and videos in its crop protection business to automatically detect the speed and depth of fungal infections in plant leaves to determine the efficacy of the product

　　Strengthen digital R&D

Strengthen digital research and development

　　For the specialty chemicals industry, the role of artificial intelligence is even more important
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Recently, Evonik Industries announced that it will extend its partnership with IBM to 2025 and will become the first chemical company to participate in the artificial intelligence research and development of the MIT-IBM Watson Laboratory

　　Henrik Hahn, chief data officer of Evonik, said that artificial intelligence can help specialty chemical companies provide technical support for industries that rely on specialty chemicals and provide better new products downstream in the value chain
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DSM Chief Technology Officer Marcus Reimers said that biotechnology and digital technology are key drivers of DSM's innovation

　　Digital companies are also more involved in the field of chemical research and development
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Kebotix founder Keir Becker said that the use of artificial intelligence and advanced robotics technology can accelerate the development of chemicals and new materials
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Kebotix has developed the world's first artificial intelligence and robot-driven closed-loop platform, which can autonomously discover, synthesize, identify and develop advanced materials and chemicals through digitalization
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In this regard, Kebotix and BP established a cooperative relationship to help the company use artificial intelligence and other advanced digital technologies to shorten the company's design process
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