BRINGING STABILITY TO A GIANT COMPLEX

Abstract

BOMBER PILOTS FLYING OVER southwest Germany during World War II prayed for moonlight. The light gleaming off the water displayed the vee that was formed where the Neckar River flowed into the Rhine. That confluence marked a strategic target: One of the largest sites of Germany's IG Farben chemicals combine. Sixty years later, that site in Ludwigshafen remains a strategic location. But now, its importance is much broader, as the site has been built by BASF-one of the companies that emerged from the ashes of IG Farben-into the largest chemicals complex in the world. The complex has not been immune to the competitiveness issues that have swept through the chemical industry in the Western world. Employment levels, productivity, process costs, and a shift in industry growth to Asia all have had their impact on the complex. Those pressures inspired a two-year project by BASF and its workforce to reassess the ...