Highlights

Abstract

Keywords

۱٫ Introduction

۲٫ Digitalization in the Chemical Industry

۳٫ The thread of automation

۴٫ Digitization in the chemical engineering profession

۵٫ Learning & education

۶٫ Conclusion

Declaration of Competing Interest

Acknowledgements

References

Abstract

This paper highlights the importance of digitalization in chemical engineering industries, in the frame of Industry 4.0, and the consequences on the employability and profession of chemical engineers. Training content must necessarily evolve to meet industry expectations and maintain the level of innovation required to meet the challenges of the future such as competitiveness, global warming, or depletion of resources. Higher Education Institutions must evolve, and digitalization also makes it possible to provide new training methods and tools that will help the teachers to face these challenges.

۱٫ Introduction

Digitization transforms the Chemical Industry rapidly across its entire value chain. Early examples of what is nowadays often called “Industry 4.0” were predictive maintenance and process automation. In 2017 Cefic recognized a rapid transformation of the entire horizontal value chain of the chemical industry due to digitalization, see (Winter, 2017). Today one experiences end-to-end supply chain integration and digitization of customer experience. Advanced analytics, often named “big data”, sets out to change the way the engineering profession views the information it gathers and the interfaces a Chemical Engineer must manage.

Digitization, Digitalization, and Digital Transformation are often used almost interchangeably. While they are certainly similar in their dependence on computer power, they are distinguishable variations in the use of digital tools in the economic environment. “Digitization”, as the most basic of the three concepts, simply refers to doing something in the digital space which has previously been done without computers. Examples are digital photography initiated in 1989 by Kodak’s first digital camera, which replaces the paper photo by a digitally stored image or the transfer of a paper-based process from an analogue to a digital format. “Digitalization” requires a digitized format and adds (business) operations which are only available since the digital data is available. Examples might be the instantaneous access to e-mail via a smart watch introduced by Apple in 2016. True “Digital Transformation” changes the business behaviour and requires digitalization en route to a different product. Examples may be found in the information business where not only the form of delivery has changed, but also archiving and search are now part of the business offering of the information provider.

This paper is based on a presentation given at the joint Education Session of the 12th EUROPEAN CONGRESS OF CHEMICAL ENGINEERING and the 5th EUROPEAN CONGRESS OF APPLIED BIOTECHNOLOGY in Florence, Italy. It looks at examples of digitization and digitalization in the Chemical Industry, the thread of automation, what digitalization changes in the chemical engineering profession and how it impacts learning and education.