Building resilience: a chemical manufacturer's AI-driven supply chain transformation
July 29
Originally published in Speciality Chemicals Magazine. Read the original article.
How Solvay moved from disconnected spreadsheets to decision-centric, AI-enabled planning across 43 sites
Like many global chemical manufacturers, Solvay faced a supply chain caught between volatile demand and mounting operational pressure, from geopolitical shocks and labor shortages to shifting regulation, all compressing margins and visibility at once.
In this feature for Speciality Chemicals Magazine, Robbert De Looff, Chemicals Industry Commercial Lead at OMP, breaks down how Solvay rebuilt its planning approach from the ground up, moving from manual, spreadsheet-driven operations to an end-to-end, decision-centric framework built with Unison Planning™.
The result: faster, more confident decisions, sustainability built into the sourcing process rather than bolted on, and a clear runway toward AI-enabled, autonomous planning.
What you'll learn in this article:
- Why Solvay's disconnected, spreadsheet-based planning became unsustainable
- How the company built resilience in three stages: focus, integration, then AI
- How sustainability targets are now embedded directly into procurement decisions
- Why decision-centric planning puts people, not just technology, at the center
“This end-to-end visibility is most powerful when it's embedded in a decision-centric framework.”
Robbert points to Solvay's shift toward proactive, autonomous decision-making as the real turning point in its transformation.
