-Natalia Klafke, EVP of Energy & Sustainability, Radix
Supply chain disruptions and global inflation continue to cause revenue crunches across many different industries. These disruptions have hit petrochemical companies especially hard as they deal with challenges in various consumer goods prices and a volatile energy market. There is simply too much going on, too quickly, for those studying the market to pick out every trend and make accurate predictions, especially with enough forewarning to enable supply chain changes to keep ahead of market forces.
Artificial intelligence (AI), however, is uniquely designed to be able to relentlessly scan through millions of data points to uncover hidden connections, dependencies, and trends. It just takes a team of knowledgeable experts to hone the AI’s skills and abilities for a specific task, like forecasting complex market forces and applying them to business operations. It is a technique that Radix Engineering has pioneered for its petrochemical companies since the early days of AI deployments.
Some typical processes that companies need to perform are the sales and demand forecasts. We have been using AI for that for a while now and employing it to predict trends regarding what will be going on with the market. We have also been using AI to enhance our demand forecast activities so that we can provide higher visibility and accuracy for what sales will look like in the next week, month, and quarter.
Petrochemical and downstream companies require accurate forecasts for upcoming sales numbers to determine their complex resource allocations and production schedules. While many large companies maintain skilled data scientists on staff to run these complex reports, they can be very time consuming to build and maintain. AI allows companies that work with Radix to construct those complex optimization models extremely quickly, letting the highly tuned AI do most of the hard, repetitive work for its human counterparts.
Radix has a track record of leveraging AI to empower specific resources like engineers to gain actionable, real-time insights from available assets - from pipelines to ships. Using Radix and AI as part of your operational logistics delivers calculable value across your entire operating model, regardless of size or scope.
This approach also removes constraints that you must often meet, from regulatory to production challenges. Most valuable, the Radix approach towards leveraging AI lets companies better predict the most economical way to allocate resources based on an optimal production plan. AI trained by Radix can do all that, and keep the plan constantly updated with new data as market conditions change.
Remove Scarcity from Your List of Challanges
Petrochemical and downstream companies also face the challenge of having to source raw materials that have a high degree of scarcity. Like the challenge of rising production costs, Radix is solving the increase in fees and costs associated with raw materials transportation by optimizing our client’s transportation logistics. On the petrochemical side, Radix uses AI to precisely determine what raw materials will be needed, both for today and in the future, and how to efficiently transport them to refineries so that they arrive as soon as they are needed – and at the lowest possible cost.
Radix is already experimenting with ways to employ AI in other areas. Soon, we will use AI to help set dynamic pricing for chemicals and petrochemicals, ensuring that its customers can get every bit of profit from each sale or contract.
Most notably, AI will eventually allow chemical and downstream companies to build customer-specific items and products. That capability has enormous potential to enable petrochemical companies to forge incredibly strong relationships with their major clients.
Radix is committed to using the most effective tools, services, and solutions to meet our customers' needs at every stage of their production and operational lifecycle. Our ability to replace AI hype with AI value is a testament of that commitment for downstream petrochemical companies and engineering firms as they face an increasingly complex set of market and environmental forces.