Rising costs, increased competition, and maturing demand combine to create a difficult environment for chemical manufacturers trying to deliver on their production and cost optimization goals. More than ever, chemical companies are turning to software to provide the tools and information their people need to make informed production decisions.
For most chemical manufacturers, collecting data is not the issue. The issue is transforming that data for integration into other systems, as well as to support business intelligence and performance management applications used to solve manufacturing problems such as reliability, maintenance, energy management, and regulatory compliance.
In the chemical manufacturing environment, Microsoft provides the platform and infrastructure from which partners build manufacturing solutions. In addition, we provide manufacturing visibility by allowing you to integrate manufacturing systems with each other and your enterprise systems. To round out your plant solutions, we complement this with additional capabilities for business intelligence, performance management, enterprise content management, collaboration, and unified communications.
Business Challenges
As you continue your march toward operational excellence, software is a key enabler for supporting your initiatives in the area of operational improvement. The following scenarios describe the manufacturing operations challenges facing the chemical industry and solutions that technology systems can offer.
Manufacturing visibility
| Business challenges | Benefits |
|---|
| Microsoft can help provide visibility into your operations by adding capabilities that integrate systems, support your decision making with business intelligence and performance management, and allow you to connect and share information and decisions with the right people, at the right time, through collaboration and unified communications. |
Manufacturing infrastructure
| Business challenges | Benefits |
|---|
| Microsoft provides infrastructure optimization capabilities for identity and access management; desktop, device, and server management; security and networking; and data protection and recovery to help you secure your environment and lower your cost of operations. |
Manufacturing enterprise resource planning (ERP)
| Business challenges | Benefits |
|---|
Lowering your cost of operations Supporting process manufacturing capabilities Dealing with a current ERP standard that is too costly to deploy into your smaller divisions and regional locations Improving production planning and inventory management Meeting quality, safety, and compliance requirements
| Microsoft and our partners provide powerful and flexible manufacturing, financial, and customer relationship management solutions that support recipe management and efficient demand planning. Our software helps you shrink development cycles, respond quickly to customer trends, and comply with changing regulations. With the right system in place, you can improve operations, open visibility into the supply chain, and increase your competitiveness. |
