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Summary
At the recently held online ARC Industry Forum Asia titled Accelerating Digital Transformation in a Post-COVID World, SUPCON participated as a Silver Sponsor. For the first time, instead of hosting separate Forums across Asia (India, Japan, and China), we consolidated our efforts into a single virtual event that attracted over 2,500 
registrations, with both Japanese and English language tracks.
ARC’s recent virtual Forums (USA and Europe) focused on the digital transformation of industry and infrastructure, and this was also the theme of the Asia Forum. Companies, such as SUPCON, have made rapid progress in digital transformation, spearheading new ways of doing business, supporting customers, leveraging available services, and adapting to a changed business environment.
Founded in 1999, SUPCON is one of China’s leading providers of automation and information technology, DCS, products, and solutions. It has grown rapidly on the back of cutting-edge systems for the development of innovative technology products. Kim Hock Teo, Vice President of International Business at SUPCON Technology, spoke about the mega market trends reshaping the global economy and digitalization of the process industries, substantiated with real-life case studies. The company is undergoing a paradigm shift in the way it views, interacts, and delivers solutions to its customers by shifting to collaboration, adding value, and business partnerships on the digital transformation journey.
Mega Trends Sweeping the Industry
Research, Innovate, Enterprise 2025 (RIE2025) is a nationwide initiative in Singapore to restructure and build a digital economy, said Mr. Teo. The key focus areas are:
- Develop technology leadership to drive Smart Nation objectives
- Reinforce Singapore’s position as a trusted digital innovation hub
- Enhance local capabilities and create new partnerships
RIE2025 has identified the key shifts that are reshaping the global economy. In a rapidly changing business 
environment, consumer preferences are changing, and the focus is on sustainability. COVID-19 and geopolitics have dramatically changed international trade flows. Before the pandemic, companies focused on efficiency, but now the focus is on resilience in supply chains and production. Across geographies, organizations are accelerating their digital transformation journeys, prioritizing innovation.
Macroeconomic forces driving the market include convergence of technologies, changing demographic landscape, sustainable development goals, and the shrinking world that intensifies competition with free flow of capital and technologies. Digitalization helps organizations to overcome the challenges ushered in by these market forces. In this context, Mr. Teo spoke about how Covestro is adapting to the changed business environment.
Covestro
Premium polymer manufacturer Covestro is reorganizing its company to become a total solution provider instead of just selling materials to its customers. This was possible because of digitalization. Covestro has a three-dimensional view of digitalization: digital operations, digital customer experience, and digital business models.
Digitalization of the Process Industry
Mr. Teo traced the progress of process automation over the years. Each stage saw significant improvements. Initially, operations were fully manual, later operations were managed by the central control room (CCR), which led to integrated operations (production and maintenance teams). Today, end users can take advantage of borderless, digitalized operations. Advancements in automation and IT have improved operational safety and efficiency through centralized control and management. Today, there is connectivity across all operational and enterprise layers from the corporate headquarters to warehouses, customers, and partners. It is about automating all the processes and breaking down the silos. The aim is to eliminate the need for spreadsheets/emails etc. in the plant. “Digitalization is a means of automating the workflow as well as the business processes,” said Mr. Teo.
SUPCON’S Digitalization Strategy
At SUPCON there’s been a paradigm shift in approach and strategy, and to create value for their customers the work ethos has changed. This is visible in the graphic below.
SUPCON focuses on five technologies to help its customers on their digital transformation journey: process, equipment, operation, automation, and information. Through these technologies SUPCON aims to deliver 
enhanced safety, quality, efficiency, sustainability, and control/reduce cost for their customers. “Digital transformation is about creating new values by greater cross-border collaboration with trusted information,” added Mr. Teo.
SupOS, the company’s scalable industrial operating system is the new paradigm that cuts through hierarchical/organizational layers. The focus goes beyond the plant to the operational issues and environment. SupOS is an open platform that provides connectivity from the plant to the outside world. Elaborating on the SupOS Industrial APP platform, Mr. Teo said that it is a collaborative tool that is unified across the enterprise with many built-in features so that larger ecosystems can be established to build applications for industries. A few applications to achieve more efficient workflows, such as online configuration, dashboard display, information security, and multidimensional visualization were explained. Mr. Teo’s advice was to “think big, start small, and scale fast.” Next, he showcased two case studies.
Shandong Chambroad Petrochemicals Digital Project: 5 ecosystem partners involved; 50+ industrial apps; integration of 30+ heterogeneous systems.
Conch Cement Big Data Platform National Research Project: Integration and interconnection of existing systems; remote maintenance and energy optimization; over 95 percent production stability.
Conclusion
The new normal created by the pandemic is impacting companies and propelling them to respond faster and become more agile and operationally resilient. It is imperative to leverage technologies for remote operations, collaborate across geographies, and improve project outcomes. Mr. Teo’s presentation made it clear that the digitalization of the process industry is accelerating and SUPCON is a valuable partner on this journey. Mr. Teo’s presentation video (Day 1, Session 3) will be available for the next three months on this platform: ARC Asia Forum 2021 (vfairs.com). The document and video link are also available at the SUPCON booth.
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Keywords: ARC Industry Forum Asia, SUPCON, Digitalization, Process Industry, Pandemic, SupOS, ARC Advisory Group.