Digitalization in the Polyurethane and Composite Sectors

Digitalization in Polyurethane and Composite Sectors Digitalization is a term used to describe the digital transformation of society and economy. The process of incorporating technological tools present in every area of our lives into work processes and transferring information to the digital environment is called digitalization. With rapidly developing technology today, sectors have begun to place greater emphasis on digitalization, and Digital Transformation has become inevitable in industry. Digital Transformation defines the process and strategy of using digital technology to change and improve how businesses operate and provide services to customers. Digital transformation has been discussed by experts for approximately 10 years, with emphasis placed on companies needing to invest in digital transformation. The reason for this is that digital transformation enables businesses to incorporate the pace and convenience of an evolving and digitalized world into their operations. Until 2019, many companies continued to accelerate their digital transformation processes. According to research conducted, companies accelerated their digital transformation processes even further with the Covid-19 pandemic. According to the 2021 BDO Digital survey, 43% of the companies participating in this survey accelerated their existing plans in response to the pandemic, and 51% added new digital projects to their current plans. According to a survey conducted by Boston Consulting Group with 5,000 managers and employees regarding how the pandemic affected companies, 80% of participants stated that digital transformation efforts helped them cope with economic slowdown. [1] US-based research firm Gartner announced, based on data it collected, that it expects global spending on information technologies to reach 4.5 trillion in 2022 with a 5.5% increase. [2] Looking at the chemical sector, chemistry, like every sector, is affected by developing technology and changing trends. The world's transition to a more technological era has impacted the chemical sector. Chemical companies wishing to keep pace with this new era are making investments to adapt to the digital age. Digitalization in the chemical sector increases efficiency in supply, planning, production, storage and process management. At the same time, digitalization provides companies with broader opportunities in applications such as research and development, innovation, and design. In chemical companies supported by digital technologies, more sustainable production with lower environmental impacts can be achieved. Today, sustainability has become increasingly important in the context of global warming and climate crisis. Due to diminishing resources worldwide, one of the issues that manufacturing plants must pay attention to is consuming fewer resources and obtaining consumed energy from natural sources. In this sense, digitalization and the integration of new technologies into production support chemical companies in transitioning to more sustainable production. While chemistry encompasses a broad field, it can be seen that companies producing in polyurethane and composite areas are digitalizing just like all other sub-sectors of chemistry. With digitalization, more innovative product manufacturing is being realized in polyurethane and composite sectors. When producing new products, digitalization, which brings conveniences such as the use of artificial intelligence and better planning of business processes, has made innovative production easier. With the emphasis on sustainability, companies are mostly developing products with natural material additives.

Advantages Digitalization Has Brought to Polyurethane and Composite Sectors

In particular, the use of artificial intelligence in production through digitalization has come to the forefront. With artificial intelligence becoming more prominent, it has become easier to produce composite materials, which are frequently used in areas such as defense industry, aerospace and aviation industry, in a more error-free and more robust manner. While digitalization facilitates minimizing problems caused by human error, it has also enabled better division of work load. With digitalization, the use of nanomaterials has also increased. For example, in the composite field, the overmolding process is frequently preferred in aerospace and automotive sectors. This overmolding process enables the integration of numerous matrices ranging from macro to nano scale, and thereby allows different polymeric materials to be combined. The digitalization of composite production has brought ease in working with nanomaterials. Polyurethane is a material in which many different combinations can be created by selecting starting materials. Regarding the future development of polyurethane products, experts focus on two topics: the first is further improving completely sustainable properties and the second is digitalization in product and process development. When research is examined, digitalization has been shown to bring ease to polyurethane production processes. When explained in general terms, digitalization provides both sectors with advantages such as profitability, increased efficiency, quality and cost. Especially through digital transformation, an information flow is provided from the moment raw material enters the production line. Some companies include suppliers in their digital networks, and thus this information flow can begin with production data coming from raw material producers. Because digitalization ensures continuous information flow, information such as how much production can be made from raw material and how long it will stay on the production line has become a continuously monitored process. With artificial intelligence, which began to be used with digital transformation, production processes can continue independently. Through digitalization, human errors in production can be minimized. This certainly makes it easier to achieve faster and error-free production. Achieving this speed when using important materials in chemistry industry such as composites and polyurethane undoubtedly makes a significant contribution to the development of these sectors. Another contribution that digitalization provides to production activities is that market data is continuously analyzed and is more involved in determining production plans and varieties. In this way, faster decisions can be made about what needs to be changed in production and product variety can be provided according to market needs. Digitalization has many benefits for supply chains. Through digitalization, it becomes possible to better monitor the performance of the supply chain and better determine cost factors. At the same time, through real-time reports, the performance of the supply chain can be monitored more effectively and problems that could occur in processes can be identified more quickly and necessary measures can be taken rapidly. Raw material stocks can also be monitored more easily through digitalization. Looking at new trends in polyurethane and composite sectors, natural materials are seen to be coming to the forefront and sustainability is becoming prominent. For example, research is being conducted on topics such as the use of cellulose-based natural fibers as reinforcement in composite material production and the utilization of hazelnut shells in polypropylene polymer composite production. In developing all these works, it is of great importance to benefit from developing technological tools and to renew production equipment to keep pace with these technological innovations. With the digitalization of factories, more innovative methods can be preferred in production. Today, these innovations are mostly used to reduce environmental impact in production, and thus digitalization also contributes to sustainability.  

Conclusion

With the digital transformation taking place in the chemical sector and its sub-sectors, more innovative products can be manufactured and more sustainable production can be achieved. In this sense, polyurethane and composite materials, which are utilized in many sectors such as automotive, aerospace and aviation, entertainment, footwear, bedding, furniture, etc., provide many benefits to these sectors when innovative manufacturing is carried out. With the Covid-19 pandemic, many companies accelerated their digital transformation in production, also beginning to work from home. Machines and computers in factories are taking control. With this change, human error is being eliminated. In the coming periods, experts emphasize that human labor could be completely eliminated from production. Looking at polyurethane and composite materials, especially composite materials consist of many components. By using these components correctly, many diverse materials can be produced with desired properties. The use of digitalization in this field allows these materials to be tested more easily with more accurate test methods. Desired durability and other properties can now be tested in virtual environments even before production takes place. This allows the parameters to be used in production to be determined much earlier. The benefit we mentioned for composite materials above also applies to polyurethane. Especially in the footwear sector, measuring the temperature and environmental resistance of polyurethane materials, which are frequently used, is very important in terms of production efficiency. At this point, digitalization provides significant contributions to these research and development test methods.     Sources 1. https://bulutistan.com/blog/dijital-donusum-nedir/ 2. https://www.aa.com.tr/tr/bilim-teknoloji/dijitaldonusume-yonelik-teknolojiler-2022de-etkisiniartiracak/2467721 3. Current and Future Trends in Polyurethanes: An Industrial Perspective; Berend Eling, Zelijo Tomovic, Volker Schadler 4. https://www.rockwellautomation.com/tr-tr/company/news/blogs/dijitallesme-arac-dijital-donusumamac-olmali.html 5. Transition to sustainable chemistry through digitalization; Peter Fantke, Claudio Cinquemani, Polina Yaseneva, Jonathas De Mello, Henning Schwabe, Bjoern Ebeling, Alexei A.Lapkin 6. Recent developments on the overmolding process for the fabrication of thermoset and thermoplastic composites by the integration of nano/micron-scale reinforcements; Nargiz Aliyeva, Hatice S. Sas, Burcu Saner Okan 7. Canonical Correlation Analysis and a New Composite Index on Digitalization and Labor Force in the Context of the Industrial Revolution 4.0; Ane-Mari Androniceanu, Irina Georgescu, Manuela Tvaronavičienė, Armenia Androniceanu       Author Nilsu Kotil