Ascend Performance Materials eliminated 'hidden factory' with process mining

Ascend Performance Materials optimized its processes and boosted productivity by eliminating what it calls the "hidden factory" of process detours and extra work.

Speaking at the OPEX Week Business Transformation World Summit 2022 conference in Miami, Ascend Performance Materials executives Caitlin Eason and Nicole Hoke walked through the company's Celonis deployment.

Ascend Performance Materials is the world's largest fully integrated producer of polyamide 66 resin, a specialty nylon used in multiple products ranging from vehicle airbags to smart appliances to medical devices and everyday consumer goods.

Eason, Celonis Global Enterprise Project Manager at Ascend Performance Materials, said the company was able to see rework loops, manual processes and supply chain issues and then fix them. The productivity gains uncovered via Celonis equated to another factory.

Nicole Hoke, Director of Supply Chain at Ascend Performance Materials, noted that the company has stood up a Center of Excellence designed to enable change management, break down data silos and create a digital twin of the company's operations.

As for the future roadmap, Ascend Performance Materials plans to work with Celonis partner Conexiom on order entry automation. Ascend Performance Materials and Celonis are working on digital twin projects as well as finding new use cases across multiple processes.

Ascend Performance Materials plans to continually improve order to cash, procurement to pay and finances over time. The digital twin efforts are designed to make Ascend Performance Material's supply chain more resilient.

Also see: Process mining hits inflection point in 2022 as decision makers eye better execution

Indeed, Ascend Performance Materials has already seen strong returns including a 27% improvement in on-time deliveries in 4 months, 34% improvement in process compliance within 60 days and a 43% increase in automation rate for inter-company price changes.

Hoke and Eason also said the company's keys to success include engaging all levels of the organization, creating cross functional teams and dedicated analysts to continually improve across its nine global manufacturing facilities.

Ascend Performance Materials' Hoke and Eason also presented at Celosphere 2021. Takeaways from that talk include:

• Celonis has enabled the company to operate "based on facts, not feelings," said Eason.

• Action Flows have enabled the company to cut across silos in its supply chain and understand the handoffs and ownership throughout each sales order process.

• Hoke said that Ascend Performance Materials improved its resiliency during a challenging 2020 by improving process efficiency and managing through supply constraints.

• Ascend Performance Materials is planning on enterprise-wide implementations of Celonis with a plan to automate where possible.

• Celonis EMS will enable the company to scale across the company.

Related:

• What is Process Mining?

• Get educated on process mining.

• Leverage process mining best practices, e-books and courses at Celonis Academy.

• Consider task mining as a technology to use with process mining.

• Look for process mining use cases that span multiple systems since returns tend to be larger there.

Larry Dignan

Editor in Chief (former)

Larry Dignan is the former Editor in Chief of Celonis Media. Before joining Celonis, he was Editor in Chief of ZDNet and has covered the technology industry and transformation trends for more than two decades, publishing articles in WallStreetWeek.com, Inter@ctive Week, The New York Times, and Financial Planning magazine.