Dow Chemical constantly changes the world of materials

Materials have changed the world, and Dow Chemical has been continuously creating new materials after the transition.

When you are in the laundry laundry, you may wonder why dry cleaning? When you are driving at night, you may wonder why the road signs still look clear? When you use a water purifier, you may be tempted to figure out the principle of clean water. Even the popular Crocs shoes are full of the street. You sometimes wonder why the shoes are so durable.

That's right! You know, or don't understand, new materials are here, everywhere. These seemingly inconspicuous but new materials that are closely related to everyone are being integrated into every corner of life "indiscriminately," changing or even subverting everyone's life. “New materials play an increasingly important role in all areas of human life.” Yao Weiguang, chief technology officer of Dow Chemical's Asia Pacific region, said in an interview with “Business Value”, “There is no doubt that materials change the world and continue to Creating new materials is Dow Chemical's responsibility."

Indeed, on the “Dow Innovation Day 2011” of December 1, 2011, Dow Chemical demonstrated the application of a wide variety of new materials, such as beverage soft packaging, apparel fabrics, shampoo products, nutritious and healthy edible oils, etc. Etc. - Many new materials that look away from life are so closely related to everyday life.

Since its founding in 1897, Dow Chemical has always been a product-oriented chemical company. With its strong technical strength, it has developed various chemical raw materials and then sold them to customers, who then apply these materials to their daily life. Various terminal products. However, with the changes in the external environment, Dow Chemical also recognizes that it is necessary to shift from the upstream basic chemical field to the functional product business and application market business. Not only do we need to bury our heads in R&D, but we also need to understand the needs of our end customers and provide them with integrated solutions.

"Based on the needs of customers, we have developed more new products to meet the needs of different customers for different materials. This is the focus of Dow Chemical's future development," said Yao Weiguang.

"Old Tree New Flower"

The 12th building of Huixin West Street Community in Chaoyang District of Beijing completed the energy-saving renovation in 2011. Before the renovation, the average thermal conductivity of the roof was measured as 1.26 W/m2·K. After the 60 mm thick Shu Tai Long insulation board was converted, the heat transfer coefficient was 0.49 W/m2·K and the heat transfer coefficient was lower than the 65% energy saving requirement. The national standard of not more than 0.60 W/m2·K, and the cost used is evenly distributed to the building area per square meter of only 3.63 yuan. If the old districts in Beijing can carry out energy-saving reconstruction according to Building No. 12, then one year can save energy equivalent to about 638,000 tons of standard coal and reduce carbon dioxide emissions by 1,767,300 tons.

The Shutailong insulation board used in the energy-saving reconstruction of Building 12 is Dow Chemical's product. This is a seemingly ordinary blue foam plastic board, but it plays an unimaginable role in building energy efficiency. In addition to heat preservation, it also has excellent dimensional stability to ensure no deformation and excellent water resistance to ensure water seepage in the building, high thermal resistance, and superior compressive strength. In fact, the new material of Shutailong was first born in 1941. The purpose of the original invention was to apply it to the naval assault boat. This is largely due to the light, non-absorbent, and non-deformable characteristics of the material. It can be said that for building energy conservation, Shutailong is a very ideal material. It has been applied in 21 million buildings worldwide, saving energy consumption by about US$10 billion per year, and reducing hundreds of millions of tons of CO2 emissions. Usually it can take 1 to 5 years. cover the cost.

As the economic environment continues to change, Shu Tailong's application areas are also expanding, such as automobiles, airports, bridges, industrial insulation, wind energy and home appliances. “Shu Tailong is a model of Dow Chemical's “old trees blossoming new flowers”.” Yao Weiguang said, “Who can think of the materials used in the year to play such a big role in daily life?”

Just as the human body needs different nutrition, a reasonable package solution is the real need for human health. For the field of building energy efficiency, the truth is also true. To this end, Dow Chemical has developed a waterproof and heat-retaining integrated TPO roofing system. This system, in addition to including STYROLON, also includes new materials such as thermoplastic polyolefin TPO single-layer waterproofing membranes that are well received in the industry. This integrated solution will provide customers with many benefits including water resistance, thermal insulation, windbreak resistance, chemical resistance, improved tear strength mechanical properties, and reduced leakage rates. Compared with traditional light steel roofing, Dow TPO roofing system uses hot-air welding between the coils, and the whole is sealed. The flexible TPO waterproofing membrane covers the roof and avoids rainwater intrusion. The white waterproofing membrane can reflect heat and reduce roof thermal load. With the heat island effect, the energy consumption for cooling energy-saving buildings reaches 25%; excellent welding performance ensures the durability of products. Not only that, but more importantly, this solution does not use any plasticizers or chlorides in the production process and can be recycled 100%. It is truly green.

“Continuously tapping the value of the original material and supplementing it with supporting materials to form an integrated solution is one of the important directions for the future development of Dow Chemical.” Yao Weiguang said, “The Dow Chemical Plan will increase the heat preservation coefficient of Shu Tailong. Doubled."

Change yourself

For a long period of time, although Dow Chemical has created a century-long glorious history, Dow Chemical gradually showed a situation of lack of growth or even loss due to changes in the external environment. This is due to the fact that Dow Chemical's focus is mainly on the upstream. The field of basic chemistry is severely constrained by the influence of upstream oil prices, with obvious cyclical changes and high costs. At the same time, the added value of downstream functional materials has been increasingly reflected. Concentrating downstream has become the key to improving efficiency. Obviously, Dow has not been as intoxicated as Kodak and other companies. In 2009, the successful acquisition of Rohm and Haas for $18.8 billion was a sign of Dow's self-change.

Compared to external mergers and acquisitions, for Dow Chemical, the internal transformation of the self is also the core and focus of this transformation. “Re-combing and shaping Dow's R&D system has become the focus of change.” Yao Weiguang frankly stated, “From product-oriented to market-driven is the biggest change.”

Indeed, Dow consistently adheres to the core of its products and pursues high-precision new materials. It has never been spared, and has not paid much attention to the uses and market value of new materials developed. For example, the ugly shoes that swept the world, the material is developed by Dow Chemical, but unfortunately, Dow did not find its huge market value, and was made into world-class products by others.

Therefore, Dow changed its previous method of technology-driven R&D. It became R&D with customers, listened to customer needs, discovered market gaps, and used it as a driving force for R&D. At Dow, the usual R&D model is to develop platform technology at U.S. headquarters, and then develop products that adapt to local customer requirements in developing markets such as China, and now it is the reverse. For example, Chinese consumers are more sensitive to indoor formaldehyde pollution than Europe, North America and other places. For the special needs of Chinese consumers, Dow has developed a “formaldehyde removal” coating technology. This is entirely adapted to the needs of China's own territory, but it has also received good results in North America and Europe. This is also a successful case of "reverse innovation."

This "Let the elephant dance" change seems to be simple. It is not easy for Dow who has a hundred years of tradition. In addition to the regular mergers and restructurings, the most significant changes to Dow's R&D department include the establishment of a customer innovation center and the introduction of a new innovation evaluation system.

The so-called customer innovation center is Dow will create a platform to find new materials together with downstream customers, and develop new products to meet this demand. In the discussions with customers, new ideas were collided and finally executable plans were formed. At the same time, industry development trends and technological development trends were also understood, which provided support for Dow's future long-term development plans. Not only that, it was also Dow. The places where chemical executives, technical R&D teams, market sales and customer service meet each other, and people from different departments are motivated to create better product “packages” to meet downstream demand for integrated solutions from different perspectives. .

"Dow is to break the original laboratory wall and form an open innovation system." Yao Weiguang said.

In addition, in order to encourage R&D personnel to innovate, researchers may apply for corporate innovation support from the headquarters for some research projects. The Dow Committee of Experts will conduct a comprehensive assessment of its application projects. If it is a relatively short-term project, ** can provide half the project cycle of financial support, and then do a potential assessment to determine whether to continue investment; if it is more significant and long-term The project will carefully plan the funding and manpower and advance it in stages. Dow has reserved 100 million U.S. dollars for innovation every year. The progress of all projects related to the use of funds has been published on the intranet and employees have received supervision and feedback.

Naturally, the chain reaction of this kind of change is to create a brand new evaluation system to assess everyone's performance. This is an inevitable choice that is very consistent with the actual situation. After all, different materials require different R&D cycles and industrial uses. Many companies' innovation evaluation systems generally look at three indicators: the proportion of R&D investment in company sales; the number of patents in the company; and the proportion of new product sales in total sales. However, Dow does not think that these three indicators can truly reflect a company's ability to innovate. To this end, Dow has introduced a new evaluation system for innovation, which is also three indicators: First, look at R & D output, that is, the sales of new products. The ratio of research and development investment, which can represent the efficiency of innovation; the second look at the profitability of new products; the third look at the patent, not to see the number, but to see whether this patent protects your new product, that is, under the protection of patents The ratio of new product sales to total sales. "These three indicators can more clearly reflect the relationship between input and output." Yao Weiguang believes.

This change has also brought great economic benefits. In 2010, one-third of Dow Chemical's sales came from new products launched in the last five years. Dow has a global R&D elite team and is currently focusing on more than 500 large R&D projects.

“Currently we can only say that Dow Chemical's revolution has achieved a phased success.” Yao Weiguang said, “This road is very difficult, but the direction of Dow Chemical's reform is correct.”

Nuggets new materials

Looking at the history of human development is actually a history of discovering, using, and innovating materials. At present, material science and technology, together with information technology and biotechnology, constitute the three most important areas in the world in the 21st century and have the most potential for development, especially new material technologies, which are developing new and high technologies, transforming and upgrading traditional industries, and low-carbon environmental protection. The field has a wide range of applications. Countries in the world also regard the development of new materials as an important part of their scientific and technological development strategies, and they are listed as one of the key technologies for priority development in the 21st century. It can be said that new material technology is the cornerstone of all other technological developments.

The data shows that the annual growth rate of domestic new materials industry has reached as high as 22.5% in the past 10 years, while the use of nanomaterials, new rare earth materials, new battery materials, and new photoelectric materials as statistical calibers have resulted in a new material industry with a scale of more than 130 billion yuan in 2010. However, due to the multiplier effect of the new materials industry, the market size of China's new materials industry in 2010 exceeded 650 billion yuan. According to the “12th Five-Year Plan” of new materials, the new material industry will reach a total output value of RMB 2 trillion by 2015, and the average annual growth rate will exceed 25%. It is very clear that the new materials industry is a huge potential market that is worth exploring in depth.

In particular, China's chemical industry has achieved an output value of 960 billion U.S. dollars, which has exceeded the U.S. value of 670 billion U.S. dollars. China has become the largest chemical industry market in the world. In 2010, Dow Chemical Greater China achieved sales revenue of US$4 billion, accounting for 7.5% of the company’s global sales revenue of US$53.7 billion. Obviously, for Dow Chemical, the Chinese market's position in its strategy cannot be ignored.

To this end, Dow has accelerated the strategic layout of the Chinese market.

At the R&D level, Dow built an R&D center with a total area of ​​100,000 square meters in Shanghai and adopted an integrated R&D model. This means that Dow's R&D, marketing, and laboratories are all concentrated in its staff. This is also the largest integrated R&D base outside the US market. It is also the business and innovation center of Dow Greater China and Dow Asia Pacific.

In the downstream industrial layout, Dow is actively deploying in China, for example, building a world-class alcohol ether plant with an annual production capacity of 120,000 tons in Zhangjiagang. The plant mainly produces propylene glycol series alcohol ether products for electronic, paint coatings and cleaning products. It is planned to open an office in Chengdu to radiate the western China market. Dow currently has 3,600 employees, 6 business centers and 18 production bases in China.

Dow hopes that China’s sales revenue will reach US$0.7 billion to US$8 billion by 2015. Yao Weiguang said: “This means that compared to 2010, sales revenue will double by 2015.”