Chemical production is often considered heavy and conservative. There's a good reason for that - plants are designed to run for years, and products rarely change. However, this does not mean they are immune to technological change. This is best seen at the Solvay Sodium soda ash plant, which has an ambitious program to transform the way it works by 2030, both in terms of production and in the management of the business itself. At the heart of this program is digitalization through which the company aims to remain a market leader for all its products.
Solvay's star program
The Star Plant program, currently being implemented at Solvay Group level, started two years ago. "We live in a very dynamic and challenging world. This has made us realize that we need to be very flexible and adaptable," Natalia Doneva, Director of Manufacturing Excellence and leader of the program at Solvay Sodi, tells Capital weekly. The company exports about 85% of its production outside Europe. "There, we face very strong competition which does not have to abide by the carbon emissions rules," she explains.
The main objectives of the program, which runs until 2030, are to ensure the company's competitiveness and sustainability, including achieving carbon-free production, reducing water consumption and more. "We also strive to develop our employees. We want them to be skilled and motivated, to attract new talent, which is a very big challenge in Bulgaria and in the chemical industry, which is not so attractive to young people nowadays," Doneva says.
Part of the Star Plant is also the energy transition program, which includes various projects and whose ultimate goal is the complete elimination of the carbon footprint. This will be achieved by optimizing steam and electricity consumption, as well as other projects the company is currently preparing. "The goal is not only to beat the competition, but to remain leaders in our markets," Doneva adds.
Engineers of the future
Digitalization plays an important role on the road to this transformation. This affects both production processes and the way of working itself. The priority this year and next will be industrial digitalization, where the impact is greatest. "One of our goals is to create the engineers of the future of our company who have the tools and digital platforms to launch their careers. We're setting up the systems so that when a new engineer comes in, they literally take over, get in the fast lane and start adding value," explains Stanislav Fotev, who is responsible for the digitalization and digital transformation of the company.
One of the program highlights is the so-called visual management, where the necessary information is visualized on dashboards for faster and easier perception. Another focus is the use of very serious data-driven analytics to improve production processes, resource optimization, etc. There will also be platforms in maintenance, safety, environment, quality, etc. A major project for this year is Star Tek, a manufacturing data collection environment. It will allow the company to bring together different types of databases in one place, which in turn will facilitate subsequent data analysis, and the use of different tools to improve efficiency and manage performance, etc.
Thinking differently
However, much of the transformation will come from changing the way employees think. "One direction is about performance management, the other is problem solving," says Ivelin Mitev, a project and change management specialist. An important role in performance management is played by visual management, where dashboards have already been integrated and will continue to be integrated to track various metrics. A multi-level Lean 6 Sigma cascade training initiative is underway, with more than 90 people undergoing instruction.
There's a reason Solvay Sodi is paying attention to changing mindsets. "Any company can buy digitalization, but not every company can implement it and use it effectively," Fotev notes, adding that, in general, students in Eastern Europe are not graduating from university digitally prepared, and they need further training. "This distinguishes us," he says. This year, for example, the company has a massive Google training campaign for the business platform it uses, with all employees who use a computer or smartphone receiving training.
Like in an IT office
In order to attract and retain people, Solvay Sodi also applies some non-standard - at least for an industrial environment - practices. "This year we have expanded a health and well-being program quite a lot, for example on certain days we organized stretching exercises on site at the plant. We also did exercise in the form of folk dancing and a bunch of other things that are much more common in the likes of IT companies," communications specialist Vasilena Popova says.
In her words, these initiatives enjoy the interest of colleagues, give an additional tone and a feeling in employees that the company is thinking about being a really attractive place. "We can also boast that when a male colleague has a child, he gets 16 weeks of paid leave," Fotev adds.
Chemical production is often considered heavy and conservative. There's a good reason for that - plants are designed to run for years, and products rarely change. However, this does not mean they are immune to technological change. This is best seen at the Solvay Sodium soda ash plant, which has an ambitious program to transform the way it works by 2030, both in terms of production and in the management of the business itself. At the heart of this program is digitalization through which the company aims to remain a market leader for all its products.
