Abstract
The chemical industry has sustained the development of global economies by providing an astonishing variety of products and services, while also consuming massive amounts of raw materials and energy. Chemical firms are currently under tremendous pressure to become lean enterprises capable of executing not only traditional lean manufacturing practices but also emerging competing strategies of digitalization and sustainability. All of these are core competencies required for chemical firms to compete and thrive in future markets. Unfortunately, reports of successful transformation are so rare among chemical firms that acquiring the details of these cases would seem an almost impossible mission. The severe lack of knowledge about these business transformations thus provided a strong motivation for this research. Using The Open Group Architecture Framework, we performed an in-depth study on a real business transformation occurring at a major international chemical corporation, extracting the architecture framework possibly adopted by this firm to become a lean enterprise. This comprehensive case study resulted in two major contributions to the field of sustainable business transformation: (1) a custom lean enterprise architecture framework applicable to common chemical firms making a similar transformation, and (2) a lean enterprise model developed to assist chemical firms in comprehending the intricate and complicated dynamics between lean manufacturing, digitalization, and sustainability.
Highlights
Accepted: 23 April 2021The chemical industry plays a key role in the global economy
For the three business groups (BGs), the analysis indicates that one of the major challenges will probably come from climate-related issues, especially capturing the carbon footprint across the vast value chain in order to accurately measure overall greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions
Firms in this industry are currently under tremendous pressure to transform their organizations toward becoming lean enterprises, with the capability of following the traditional lean manufacturing philosophy with new competing digitalization challenges and sustainability strategies
Summary
The chemical industry plays a key role in the global economy. With annual sales of USD 5 trillion and a workforce of more than 20 million people, chemical manufacturing is the backbone of various end-market industries, including automobiles, construction, pharmaceutics, agriculture, etc. [1,2]. Chemical firms are facing a global market that is changing rapidly. According to market research [5], three megatrends are expected to have a profound impact on the chemical industry in the coming years: sustainability and the circular economy, digitalization, and innovation and accelerated globalization. Tactics: Transitional (or the firm’s transitional state of existence for the future) As previously elaborated, this transition in the chemical industry can arguably be adopting digitalization to increase efficiency and drive growth by satisfying unmet consumer needs. As elaborated in the following, this transformation for the chemical industry can be targeted at elevating chemical firms from conducting lean manufacturing to adopting lean enterprise practices in order to achieve higher standards (e.g., UN sustainability goals) by attracting new customers or successfully exploiting new product development.
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