Sustainable Plastics - May/June 2020 - 22

digitalisation

Digitalisation and
sustainability are
intimately linked

Royal DSM, which started life as Dutch State Mines in 1902, has a strong track record
of transforming and reinventing itself in line with - and ahead of - market demands
and customer needs. DSM's Chief Technology Officer, Marcus Remmers, talked to
Sustainable Plastics about how his R&D organization is leveraging digital capabilities
to drive further growth and value.
Would you say DSM is engaged in a digitalisation
process or in a digital transformation?
DSM is highly engaged in a
digital transformation across
all its functions, business
groups and locations around
the world. As such, our digital
transformation is embedded
at all levels of our organization and fully aligned with our
strategy. Our digital transformation program is centred around three elements:
building a digital toolset,
skillset and mindset across
the company. We believe that
only putting the right digital
tools is place is not enough.
You need to have an engaged
workforce that intrinsically
wants to explore new, digital
ways-of working and that is
trained to do so.
What is the potential of digital technologies for R&D?
Digital
is
fundamentally
changing the way R&D is
done. Digital technologies
have the potential to increase
the R&D efficiency and accelerate the innovation process.
For instance, implementing
data and knowledge management tools support the integration and re-use of scientific
data, which allows scientists
to significantly reduce their
time spend on scientific experiments. We have implemented
an intelligent online search
application called brAInS.

May/June 2020

Now there is no need to skim
through thousands of scientific publications anymore.
Instead, brAInS suggests the
most relevant papers from
sources from within and outside DSM and highlights the
exact paragraphs a scientist is
looking for.
But there is more. We are
also looking at automating and
robotizing labs. Robots can execute repetitive tasks with higher
speed and precision compared
to humans, which increases the
efficiency of our lab work - allowing us to speed up the timeto-market of our innovations.
Equally important, it allows our
scientists to free up time for
more value added activities, like
creative thinking, interacting
with customers and exploring
novel business models, which
is not only more impactful, but
also more engaging.
How far along are you on
your digital journey?
Our digital transformation
is an ongoing journey - there
will be no hard finish line when
this transformation is complete.
However, the immediate horizon for our current roadmap is
2022. Our digital R&D roadmap
was developed by looking at
the latest trends in digital technologies - like Data Analytics,
Artificial Intelligence, High-Performance computing and Robotization, to name a few - and
matching those with the current and future requirements

of our customers.
Our
Marketing
& Sales teams
play a pivotal
role in pinpointing the trends in
the markets as
well as customer
needs, while ICT
supports us with
the implementation of the tools.
As you can see, digitisation
is bringing together different
competences and departments,
fostering collaborations we
have never seen before - which
is truly inspiring!
Can a company the size of
DSM respond in an agile way
to changes and developments?
For example, during the current coronavirus pandemic -
were you able to adapt easily?
Absolutely, yes! During the
coronavirus pandemic, we
demonstrated the significant
impact a purpose-led organization has when it responds
quickly to wider changes and
developments. Among many
other important initiatives, we
were able to help manufacture 2.8 million nose swabs
for Covid-19 test kits, coordinate the production of protective medical mouth masks,
and quickly convert one of our
coating resin production lines
to create 130,000 litres of hand
sanitizer for Dutch healthcare
workers. More than ever, we put
our science-based capabilities

'Digital is
fundamentally
changing the way
R&D is done.'
Marcus Remmers
DSM

to the service of people and the
wider society - and our digital
capabilities play an important
role in this. For instance, the design of the nose swab, as well
as the mould for production,
were developed with DSM's
Additive Manufacturing expertise. 3D printing allowed us to
design and rapidly test multiple
prototypes. Without this digital technology we would never
have been able to deliver on the
sharp deadlines given by the
Dutch government.
Have you run up against
any barriers on your digital
journey?
As mentioned before, we are
working hard not only to put the
right toolsets in place, but also
to help our people develop the
right skills and the right digital
mindset. For each of these elements we face challenges at
different moments in time. Take
the element of mindset; on the
whole, our R&D community
recognizes the enormous potential of our digital capabilities
and sees these technologies as

Sustainable Plastics - May/June 2020

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of Sustainable Plastics - May/June 2020