MOSCOW (MRC) -- By implementing improvement proposals from employees, BASF, the world's petrochemical major, managed to save nearly EUR60 million globally last year, said the producer on its site.
A computer program for labeling samples, a concept for efficient distillation of a solvent, and a new approach to the energy-saving melting of waxes – these and 21,000 other improvement proposals were implemented in 2016, maintaining the high level of ideas of the previous year. BASF rewarded the ingenuity of its employees with bonuses totaling EUR4.4 million.
There was also a host of new ideas implemented at the Ludwigshafen Verbund site, which achieved savings of approximately EUR30 million for the fifth consecutive year. BASF rewarded the performance of its employees at the Ludwigshafen site with EUR3 million in bonuses. Employees of the Petrochemicals division were particularly inventive: their improvement proposals achieved annual net benefits of EUR6.5 million.
Many of the ideas were developed through teamwork. For example, employees at the melamine plant of the Monomers division, working together with colleagues from quality management, implemented an innovative refurbishment concept. In parts of a plant with hundreds of densely stacked pipes, a few pipelines were defective. Rather than idling the entire plant for several months, the colleagues were able to identify the specific lines needing to be shut down, while the remaining lines could continue to operate. This allowed total downtime to be reduced to just eight weeks, and saved costs of approximately EUR2 million.
As MRC informed before, in November 2016, BASF unveiled its plans to invest globally more than EUR200 million in its plastic additives business, approximately half of which in Asia, within the next five years, focusing on capacity expansions and operational excellence.
BASF is the largest diversified chemical company in the world and is headquartered in Ludwigshafen, Germany. BASF produces a wide range of chemicals, for example solvents, amines, resins, glues, electronic-grade chemicals, industrial gases, basic petrochemicals and inorganic chemicals. The most important customers for this segment are the pharmaceutical, construction, textile and automotive industries. BASF generated sales of about EUR58 billion in 2016.
MRC