Industry Background
The Chemical Industry is comprised of many types of businesses that utilize chemicals in different ways from Research and Development to Manufacturing and Production of raw chemicals or their derivatives. A majority of products created in the Chemical Industry are sold to and used by other manufacturers in order to create a final product. Only a small number of products are direct to consumer products such as solvents and pesticides. Some of the job titles in the industry include chemical or process engineers, chemists, lab technicians, quality analysts, and many more. Some of the biggest companies in the Chemical Industry that happen to also be JMP customers include BASF, Dow, DuPoint, and PPG industries.
Who uses JMP (Companies and Roles)?
JMP is employed across many roles in the Chemical Industry. Every role from Research & Development to manufacturing including process and product development takes advantage of the power of JMP. Design of Experiment (DOE) is particularly important in the chemical industry, especially Chemical Engineers and Scientists in Research. Process Engineers and Quality Analysts tend to be more involved with quality control tools like control charts and measurement system analysis.
What challenges do they solve using JMP?
Chemical Analysts and Scientists use DOE to structure routine exploration of an idea. They have an initial goal of, for example, making sure a chemical reaction works well enough to suggest a viable route to production. Process Engineers and Quality Analysts then use DOE to create stochastic mathematical models of the manufacturing process to maximize reaction yield and minimize production costs. In some situations, Quality Analysts also face the challenge to ensure compliance with various government regulations.
Why is JMP a good solution for them?
JMP is a good solution for the Chemical Industry because it allows processes to run faster across all aspects including research/development, process/product development, manufacturing, and more. JMP can also create opportunities to automate many tasks, giving users more freedom to pursue more complex issues. JMP also does not require coding, which makes it accessible to more users. In the Chemical industry, many facets of work require aggregating and analyzing large data sets from multiple sources, which JMP can help users achieve.
Customer Success Stories
BASF is responding to a mandate to remove phosphates from detergents. A team of BASF chemists set out to find a chemical composition with similar cleaning properties. JMP helped the team evaluate the performance of a variety of compounds and proved to be a considerable timesaver. Using JMP, BASF chemists designed a new cleaning formulation now used in place of phosphates by dish detergent manufacturers around the world.
Biotechnology giant Syngenta brings science to the age-old art of agronomy with cutting-edge statistical methods and sustainable technologies. Scientists deploy analytical decision making strategies, from design of experiments to quality control and process reliability. They use JMP to build compelling models; thereby gaining buy-in from local managers formerly reliant on intuition-based reasoning.
Scientists use design of experiments in JMP Pro to develop a system that records results in a complex chain to identify potential breaks and failures and to account for them in future formulations. A more efficient and reliable fermentation process means the development cycle for new products can be shortened, enabling Symrise to bring new flavors and fragrances to market faster.
“JMP is absolutely invaluable if you want to see what's going on within the data. We can learn from the data already available to visualize an outcome that works both in theory and in practice.”
- Egon Gross, Master Technologist, Symrise
Dow is adding ‘billions and billions’ in value with Six Sigma. MP is used in many facets of Dow’s operations. As Dow transitions from a traditional manufacturer to a solutions provider, JMP has become an essential tool for analyzing and presenting data, sharing it in a collaborative process with colleagues and customers, and using it to project new initiatives.
The democratization of statistical best practices compliments domain knowledge to speed innovation and deepen collaboration between PPG sites around the world. With JMP in hand, domain experts are empowered to adopt statistical best practices that boost efficiency and scientific reproducibility, regardless of their statistical skill level. A multitiered approach to analytics in turn frees up Six Sigma Black Belts and IT managers to focus on PPG’s most complex, value-adding challenges.
“Regardless of whether someone is across the hall or across the ocean, if you’re looking at a JMP file together, you can drop some scripts in and find ways to extend the analysis.”
– Dave Sartori, Senior Data Scientist, PPG Industries
Sales Win Stories
Kemira Shanghai, the Chinese division of a global leader in sustainable chemical solutions for water-intensive industries, recently acquired five JMP licenses. Kemira plans to use JMP for DOE and quality control for its chemical products. Nicky Cai says, “We first approached Kemira in October 2020 when we found out that engineers from Kemira’s European operations were teaching DOE with Excel. They were using Excel for data analysis, which was very time-consuming since they had to enter every result of their experiments into the Excel sheet.”
After a brief introduction of JMP, Nicky had them download a JMP trial license. They were immediately interested. Nicky continues, “They invited us to do a customized demo in Chinese to help them understand how JMP could help them. We presented several DOE functions (DSD, custom design and traditional DOE) and told them how to use JMP to improve process flow and how to use Graph Builder.” The demo did the trick. Kemira purchased five licenses and plans to add more in the future.
- Product: JMP
- Amount: $6,916
- Integral Players: Nicky Cai, Candice Lin
Germany-based BASF, the largest chemical producer in the world, recently added 100 more JMP licenses to bring its total to 750.
Getting to 750 has been a journey for Britta Schnitzer. She started working with BASF in 2017, but it was a very difficult account at that time. Says Britta, “BASF wanted to kick SAS and JMP out at that time due to contract and licensing deployment issues. We continued to work closely with the account and were able to bypass the official JMP product owner at headquarters after we found and established additional champions in Antwerp and Asia.”
Those new relationships paid off. In 2018, a multi-entity contract with a flat fee was signed, which enabled growth in Asia and several other sites. In 2020, the US contract was consolidated into the ME agreement with one single contract with a flat fee. As a result, JMP became the preferred tool for DOE in R&D and for manufacturing just in Antwerp; headquarters still wasn’t supporting JMP usage for manufacturing there.
Britta used LinkedIn to spread the usage of JMP and conducted multiple webcasts and on-site presentations. (In fact, Britta was such a fixture at BASF, many people there thought she was a colleague and not a JMP employee.) Britta says, “By inviting people to the webcasts and on-site training, which was only available to people who had JMP installed, the user number grew from 180 to 600 in three years. We bypassed the JMP product owner to grow JMP with these activities and had strong sponsorship from BASF Antwerp.”
In 2020, Bernd Heinen and Emmanuel Romeu worked with specific users to create use cases for JMP in manufacturing at the German site. In October, the manufacturing JMP champion presented a use case to management at BASF headquarters and got approval to run a project for one production line at BASF’s main site in Ludwigshafen, Germany, which will begin this August.
“Andreas Büchse, the JMP product owner at BASF, finally understands that he can´t stop JMP growth and that our activities will put him in the sweet spot for services, including training and project help,” says Britta. As a result, BASF added 50 licenses in March, all of which were consumed very quickly internally.
“Andreas is now working closely with us and encouraging BASF’s users to participate in our virtual JMP Day series, where he will also present a JMP overview and his services. To support the expected growth created by enhancing JMP usage in manufacturing and creating greater awareness via the JMP Day series, Andreas calculated that 100 additional licenses were needed, which were added in May. We are now at 750 licenses with BASF, and I am sure there are more to come over the next few years. The deals this year with BASF are a good example that it is beneficial to never give up and to keep working with these large customers. If you continue to grow awareness about the benefits of using JMP on the user side and make the global purchase process easier, it will pay out over time,” concludes Britta.
- Product: JMP
- Amount: $82,766
- Integral Players: Maria Astal Serés, Bernd Heinen, Emmanuel Romeu, Britta Schnitzer, Bill Worley
Demo Materials
In this section we can see how JMP is used for Analytic Solution to Real – World Problem. This case study was done by Peter Hersch.
In an Ethanol Plant the goal is to produce high ethanol yield and limit batch to batch variant. After gathering the data. JMP is used to first conduct a simple analysis of the variables. This can be done using Distributions by plotting the histogram for continuous variables and count for discrete variables.
Using JMP’s dynamic liking feature we can explore interactions between two variables. In the graph below we can see how it helps to find which operators have a lower temperature.
We can use Oneway Analysis to add statistics behind the visualization.
To look in detail Graph Builder can be used to visualize data.
From the analysis it is identified that the problems that occurred are due to inconsistencies in operators and temperature. To fix that the operators that were identified were retrained.
After retraining the operators, a control chart can be used to compare the impact of the change on the process.
Control chart can be built to view variables over time and over batch or phase.
From the control chart it can be confirmed that retraining of the operator helped increase the average yield.
Sources
https://www.jmp.com/en_us/industries/data-analysis-software-for-the-chemical-industry.html
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chemical_industry
https://www.jmp.com/en_us/industries/data-analysis-software-for-the-chemical-industry.html
https://www.jmp.com/en_be/events/ondemand/technically-speaking/using-statistical-process-controls-to-improve-and-monitor-your-process/watch.html#formsuccess
https://community.jmp.com/t5/JMP-Sales-and-Marketing-Library/JMP-Customer-Success-Stories-Index/ta-p/293943
https://rndconfluence.sas.com/confluence/display/JMP/Sales+Report+Content
https://community.jmp.com/t5/InsideJMP-News/JMP-Sales-Report-25June2021/ta-p/396330
https://community.jmp.com/t5/InsideJMP-News/JMP-Sales-Report-02July2021/ta-p/398431
We are very thankful to our JMP family members for sharing resources for demo, insights and their knowledge.
- Peter Hersh (Sr Systems Engineer)
- Bill Worley (Sr Systems Engineer)
- Daniel Valente (Sr Manager, Product Management)
- Emmanuel Romeu (Sr Systems Engineer )
- Geanine Tyson (Account Executive )
- Stuart Little (Systems Engineer )
