Chemical Industry In The Post Epidemic Era: Rapid Recovery Of Demand And Early Emergence Of Digital Ecology

As time went on in May, the pace of resumption of production resumed in all parts of China. The three Ning chemical industry located in Yichang city of Hubei province is ushering in their first and most important upgrading.

"The delivery of all digital projects is the first time for three Ning chemical industry." A few days ago, Li Wanqing, chairman and general manager of the company, told the twenty-first Century economic news reporter, "the project has been stagnant for almost two months because of the epidemic situation, but it is now fully restored and is expected to be completed in the fourth quarter of this year."

If the project is successful, Li Wanqing plans to transplant all the successful methods of the device to the existing equipment of the company, so that the entire three Ning chemical industry can reach the advanced level of intelligent manufacturing of large international companies, and more open digital application scenarios and changing channels, so as to further enhance the level of intelligent manufacturing.

This is also a microcosm of China's chemical industry in the post epidemic era.

"In fact, Chinese chemical enterprises have always had a strong desire for digitalization." In an exclusive interview with our reporter, Schneider, vice president of process automation of the Ministry of electrical industry automation, told reporters, "from what we know now, digitalization has become an irreversible trend after the outbreak of the epidemic, and the digitalized ecology of the chemical industry has basically taken shape". Schneider,

Impact and impact of the epidemic

In the first quarter of this year, due to the impact of the new crown epidemic, the chemical industry, whether big or small, has suffered unprecedented impact in addition to the key raw materials (such as melt blown cloth) involved in the epidemic prevention and control.

According to the statistics in 2018, China's chemical industry output value is 14 trillion and 800 billion yuan, accounting for 13.8% of the national GDP, accounting for 40% of the world's chemical output value, ranking first in the world. However, in the 100 of the global chemical enterprises, China occupies only 13 seats, but the contradiction between big and weak is obvious. Because many of the chemical industry's production is basic raw materials, it has a huge role in other industries.

During the epidemic, factories are closed down and roads are closed. Chemical industry is also highly dependent on road transportation. At the same time, it is basically located in areas with large population density in China. Local logistics control and epidemic prevention and control policies will have an impact on the chemical industry.

Although crude oil, an important raw material of the chemical industry, has seen a sharp fall in prices over the period, the lack of demand at the same time has made many previously expensive oil companies miserable. Sinopec's huge losses of nearly 20 billion yuan in the first quarter of this year, an important reason is the high priced crude which had been purchased before, resulting in huge inventory losses.

"Crude oil imports need to be cyclical, and most of the crude oil purchased by most Chinese enterprises is also futures. Basically, the delivery time will have to be pushed back for three months." He Lin said, "so, reflecting the performance of chemical enterprises, it may start from a sharp drop in oil prices, and it will take the same or even longer time."

As a result, under the influence of multiple crisis factors, many enterprises have shown the defects of disaster recovery capability from the organizational level: especially in the serious epidemic areas, enterprises with excessive concentration in production, R & D, and supply chain organizations will be greatly affected in the epidemic. Referring to the practice of foreign leading enterprises, the distributed design, business and operation automation and online organization structure can enhance the ability to deal with similar challenges.

In addition to the short-term epidemic factors that need to be considered, the increasingly stringent environmental protection and emission requirements in the medium to long term also bring many challenges to the chemical industry, a high energy consuming and highly polluting enterprise.

"For the three Ning chemical industry, we are coal chemical enterprises. If we want to achieve sustainable development, we must reduce energy consumption and emissions through technological innovation and utilization of equipment." Li Wanqing told reporters, "the application of new technology will make great progress in ourselves."

The application of new equipment and new technology will meet the requirements of environmental protection. At the same time, it will undoubtedly increase the cost of enterprises. In the process, the scale of chemical enterprises will be bigger and bigger, and the high cost of environmental protection investment will be brought about.

"We can see that over the past few years, more and more large-scale petrochemical and integrated projects have been launched in China." He Lin told reporters, "in order to have enough income under the environmental policy, we must rely on large-scale enterprises to gain profits in such a trend and achieve sustainable development."

Therefore, in the future of large-scale chemical projects, the large-scale utilization of digital technology will inevitably become the inevitable choice of chemical enterprises: under large-scale and continuous production, we can only rely on digital technology to achieve good process control.

Changes brought by digitalization

The demand for intelligent manufacturing in three Ning chemical industry started five years ago.

"At that time, we began to focus on the trend of intelligent manufacturing, and at the same time set up an office for promoting intelligent manufacturing. In recent years, 98% of our old systems have been digitally controlled. Li Wanqing said, "the smoothness of production has been significantly improved and greatly improved compared with the past, and consumption has obviously decreased."

In September 16, 2019, Schneider electric and the three Ning chemical industry reached a strategic cooperation agreement. According to the agreement, Schneider Electric will provide a series of safety and digital solutions including three series of hardware and software products for the 600 thousand ton / year coal glycol project of the three Nanjing chemical industry, and build a digital factory from the three levels of interconnection products, edge control, application analysis and service.

Whether for three Ning or Schneider, this factory is a brand new attempt. Due to the relatively early preparation, the traditional distribution and other work has been put into site commissioning. The staff of three Ning chemical industry can also learn the device through remote operating system. At present, digital delivery has been carried out to the fourth stage. With the development of the project, some functions will be added to the operation. Next, entity presentation will be carried out to explore the combination of digital delivery and operation.

"For example, the digital way to start a project meeting is not possible in the past." He Lin told reporters, "through various conference platforms, the design institutes, customers and suppliers in different regions can achieve the purpose of digitalization. Therefore, although the epidemic has an impact on the project of three Ning chemical industry, the progress has not stagnated and maintained at 60% to 70% before."

In fact, the enterprises that are aware of the trend of digitalization are not only a three Ning chemical company, but also impressed by He Lin. Since last year, almost all enterprises have talked about the vision and plan for the next two to three years. Without exception, they all referred to digitalization. The demand for suppliers in chemical enterprises is no longer a single product supplier, but an energy management service provider.

The so-called energy management service is to make use of electromechanical integration to truly achieve energy management and control, rather than just stay at the control level. Therefore, from the perspective of future trends, digital applications and empowerment will play a very positive role in promoting the efficiency and energy management of chemical enterprises.

"I thought, as a service provider, Schneider needs to push customers to accept our ideas, but when I actually visit, I feel that these enterprises need more digitalization, even more radical and more advanced than we are." He Lin said, "after the new crown pneumonia epidemic, this demand is obviously more urgent."

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