Dow Polyurethanes, a business division of Dow (Midland, Michigan, USA), announced that it is accelerating its digital transformation through increased integration into artificial intelligence (AI) and predictive capabilities geared to increasing its digital IQ across all business operations.
To do this, Dow is collaborating with Microsoft to accelerate the integration of machine learning and AI solutions into a novel predictive intelligence capability, aimed at transforming the company’s product development process while enhancing customer collaboration.
“What if we could harness the power of digitalization to become more innovative, customer-centric, inclusive and sustainable? This is the vision driving our digital transformation,” says Alan Robinson, North America commercial vice president at Dow Polyurethanes. “We are integrating new digital tools across all business operations to change the way we work and how customers do business with us. We are making our processes smarter and more cost-efficient, building novel capabilities to push the boundaries of innovation and improve our customer experience.”
Dow’s predictive intelligence capability is one of the flagship digitalization initiatives that the polyurethanes business is implementing globally to improve product formulation development process and accelerate the time-to-market of differentiated solutions.
Dow says it will benefit from Microsoft’s expertise and is using Microsoft Azure Machine Learning to develop and integrate machine learning and AI into its predictive capability. This will combine Dow’s materials science, reaction kinetics, and rheology with AI to predict trends and formulation properties, as well as simulate customer processes through historical data, predictive math models, automated work processes, and scale up apps.
A dedicated customer web portal will provide technical and product development support and allow customers to navigate the process from product search to formulation to the final delivery in one interface. It will facilitate faster response times and reduce the number of trials for more efficient collaboration and speed to market. Dow says it plans to work closely with selected customers in the development phase to design the portal.
“Customer-centricity is what drives us,” says Marcel Moeller, global marketing director at Dow Polyurethanes. “With our predictive intelligence capability, we are combining a digital channel with process digitization and AI to provide a modern and seamless customer experience across all digital touchpoints—from product search to product formulation, purchase decision to the final delivery process.”
Dow Polyurethanes is actively pursuing digitalization projects across its business operations, from research and development to marketing, customer ordering, logistics, and manufacturing. Further information on Dow’s digital transformation journey is available
at the group’s website.
Source: Dow Polyurethanes, www.dow.com/polyurethanes.