Case Study - Fortune 500 Chemicals Producer
Situation
Chemical production involves tightly coupled process parameters that must stay within narrow limits to meet customer quality requirements. When these interactions drift, manual rework becomes common, putting pressure on capacity, productivity, and gross margins.
Challenge
A leading chemical producer aimed to improve first time right. However, existing centerlining practices lacked the insights needed to identify true root causes and support real-time line improvements, limiting their effectiveness.
Solution
Ethon identified the root causes of (manual) rework and recommended setpoint changes that improved centerlining of key process parameters such as viscosity. The implementation was hands-on, with strong support for process engineers and IT teams, which led to strong user adoption and fast data pipeline setup.
Impact
E2E data integration: Built end-to-end pipeline to give batch recommendations for improved centerlining.
Identified key parameters: Identified critical drivers of process variation and provided operators with recommended actions.
First-time-right: Reduced manual batch rework by 72%.
