Digitalization of the chemical industry has been on the rise ever since the chemical industry has experienced its benefits throughout its operational cycle such as increasing the productivity of their manufacturing processes, allocation of resources at disposal of the organization which will somehow increase the efficiency and effectiveness of business operations; smooth processing of all business operations, enhancement of security and protection of confidential organizational data and many more. Innovations and advancements in the chemical industry have resulted in vast generation of complex data and this has resulted in the requirement of storage, along with the analysis of this data collection. This is where cloud computing and analytics find their way into the chemicals industry. Two of the major components of the digital age; that is currently underway in the chemical industry and their impacts have been covered below: Cloud Computing: This technology provides the chemical industry with a platform for storage, collection and timely availability of vast information generated at every second during the operations of chemicals industry. Connection of all of the devices, equipments, components and databases to the cloud help the vast multi-national global organizations in quick and immediate access of this information. This helps in significant reduction of the operational costs of the organizations operating as they are provided with the information requested by them immediately. The integration of this technology helps marketing and sales team in targeting the customers with the products that are performing well in the market, and increase the promotional and marketing activities for the products that are not being taken up by the consumers or are in demand in the market. This information is provided at an instant with the databases being available through the cloud. It is also majorly utilized in the production and supply chain management of the industry as it informs the organization and the consumer regarding the stocks available for a particular product with the organization and the time it would require for the production of the particular commodities if the stocks are less than what is required by the consumer. With the connection of various devices and equipments with cloud it also informs the company of any prospective downtime of operations as it can monitor the equipment and machines currently employed in the organizations. This technology also informs the consumer with this information and provides them alternative time slots for delivery of products. Analytics: The data streams being generated and stored are kept safe on the cloud server; although this information being collected and stored is used for accessing the databases and monitoring the devices and equipments in operations which are the obvious uses. One of the major uses of this data and information generated is performing analysis on them which will result in the better operational performance of the organization. This analysis is majorly performed on the production cycle of the commodities being manufactured in the chemicals industry where this technology calculates the resources being allocated to a particular machinery/equipment and for the production of a particular commodity and if the resources being allocated are proving to be profitable or not, this technology also provides ways and methods to improve this production cycle by reallocating these resources somewhere else and increasing the productivity of that commodity. This technology studies the demand of commodities in the market and provides prediction for improving and increasing the profitability ratio without compensating with the over-use of resources keeping in mind the sustainable methods of production. Conclusion Even with such beneficial and important components available to the chemical industry, just the adoption of these technologies available to the industry is not enough there is a requirement of revamping whole organizations for unlocking and experiencing the real potential of these technologies. There is a requirement of adoption of few associated skills and changes to the overall organizational structure of the organization. Once these changes have taken place whole of the chemical industry will be able to reap the benefits of this digital disruption.
