Advance with intelligence.

Digitalize and optimize chemical production

in three steps.
How to fully realize the potential of data-driven analysis and
machine learning in your plant
2 Advance with intelligence. - A white paper from Navigance
EXECUTIVE SUMMARY
A detailed Navigance survey* of the chemical sector
conducted found an array of differences in the nature of
various chemical operations and their level of digital maturity
but a common set of priorities across the board.
After the most critical need to ensure operational safety,
producers say they look to increase and maintain plant
availability at sufficiently high levels. Only then will they turn
their attention to improving process efficiency – though it
too is seen as a growing priority.
Accelerating industry trends such as economic downturn,
the loss of lang-standing sector experience and increased
emphasis on sustainability mean pressures to optimize
operations are growing. Digitalization is increasingly a
necessity, with some producers doing better than others.
The most advanced plants are already exploring how
advanced technologies like artificial intelligence, and
machine learning in particular, can help them make effective
use of plant data to accelerate and improve decision-making,
maximize uptime and improve efficiency.
Others are far earlier in their digitalization journey, but
nevertheless building a solid foundation for their next steps
with a stockpile of their own plant data. The challenge is
finding the time and resources to interrogate that data to
optimize, or to build the business case for technologies that
will enable them to do so more effectively, continuously, and
in near real time.
Artificial intelligence technologies such as machine learning
can help alleviate that burden, enabling plant teams to focus
their energies on realizing the potential these advances
uncover to increase plant availability or fine tune their
process for optimum efficiency.
This paper looks in more detail at these topics and the three
steps towards digitalization Navigance believes producers
with any continuous chemical process can take with
confidence and at an appropriate pace, whatever their level
of digital maturity today.
Furthermore, it shows how working with a partner with
deep-rooted experience in both chemical processes and
data science can help identify the potential availability
and efficiency gains, build a robust business case for the
technology to realize them, and provide ongoing expertise
to continuously make the most of them.
3 Advance with intelligence. - A white paper from Navigance
THE INDUSTRY PICTURE
Different perspectives, shared priorities
Chemical manufacturing is a sector of wide variations. There’s the sheer range of
chemicals manufacturers produce, and the sizes of operations needed to make
them. The day-to-day challenges plant teams face also vary, as do their most
pressing, here-and-now needs. And the extent to which digital technologies are
already helping to address them differs too.
Despite these many differences, though, most operators’ needs are fundamentally
the same at their core. This commonality was confirmed first hand in a study
of nearly 40 experts in chemical operations around the world, conducted by
Navigance in 2020*.
Figure 1: Needs and trends in the chemical industry
Interviewees came from fields including the production of ammonia, methanol,
and other basic chemicals, as well as from refineries. The topics explored ranged
from the realities and challenges of daily plant operations to interviewees’ own
priorities, opinions, and concerns.1
Across the board, their top priority was maintaining high levels of safety in their
operations. And, in general, the standards of safety already being achieved in
their plants were already very advanced.
Safety is also a prerequisite for achieving the two other priorities the research
found to be common across the industry: delivering agreed output levels, and
doing so within budgeted cost. Translated into operational needs, we might call
these priorities ‘plant availability’ and ‘process efficiency’.
Availability and efficiency
The focus for availability is keeping plants and their processes
up and running, reducing the potential for downtime and
mitigating its negative effects, such as poor product quality,
low yield or damaged reputation.
Traditionally the emphasis here has been on reactive
maintenance to get operations back up and running quickly
following an issue. The aspiration instead is to anticipate
problems and tackle instabilities well in advance, through
predictive and even prescriptive maintenance.
4 Advance with intelligence. - A white paper from Navigance
Like availability, process efficiency – whether measured in yield, energy use,
selectivity, feedstock cost, emissions or by some other means – affects a plant’s
ability to deliver its agreed output levels and do so within budget.
At a production level, the benefits of improving efficiency range from increasing
output and revenues to reducing costs, raw materials, and energy use. Beyond
the operational, doing so also creates scope to accelerate innovation, optimize
throughout the value chain, and keep pace with market and customer demands,
ensuring a roadmap to future success.
Increasing efficiency involves producers reliably measuring all relevant properties
in order to control and optimize the manufacturing of their product. But unpicking
the causes of inefficiencies after they’ve happened is resource-heavy enough.
And the utopia – predicting when and where they’ll occur in order to mitigate
against them – is a whole new level.
It’s no wonder many producers in the Navigance survey said they would only focus
attention on optimizing process efficiency once their plants were consistently
achieving high levels of operational safety and uptime. But they may no longer
have the luxury of such time.
Growing pressure to optimize will
not longer allow the luxury to putting
attention on it only when high levels
of plant uptime have been reached.
Growing pressure to optimize
Already, the chemicals industry is feeling the effects of certain trends and factors
that will make optimization not just a nice-to-have but a necessity.2
The effect of economic downturn in recent years means the ability to do more
with less – from people to energy to raw materials – has never been more
pressing. The Covid-19 pandemic has exacerbated this trend, with over 32,000
production jobs lost in the sector in the 12 months from September 2019 alone.3
Meanwhile, chemical producers are struggling to replace lost experience as an
ageing workforce retires, taking with them skills and a problem-solving intuition
that are hard to replicate quickly enough in new recruits – especially as retention
of talent is also proving difficult.
Recent sharp increases in the price of raw materials4 – costs that can be difficult
to pass on to the customer – have also made it imperative to operate more
economically.
The coming years will also see a keener focus on the sustainability of chemical
processes, and greater scrutiny of those running them. Rather than simplify
offsetting the impact of their operations, producers must now look to dramatically
and tangibly reduce that impact in the first place. Optimization will play an
important part in doing so.
Beyond operation safety, then, we can summarize the key priorities of chemical
producers as optimizing the availability of their plants and the efficiency of their
processes, improving sustainability standards along the way. Digitalization can
help achieve them, but the pace at which industry players are adopting the
necessary technologies varies greatly.
5 Advance with intelligence. - A white paper from Navigance

DIGITALIZATION IN THE CHEMICAL SECTOR Meanwhile, other smaller chemical players are taking their first steps into digital
ways of working. Those in the earliest stages have historically invested little into
The opportunity in the complexity
equipment and digital technologies. If there’s improvement potential to be found,
With digitalization, the tools, services, and solutions needed to add value to
it must often be within the confines of the assets they already have.
complex operations and achieve new levels of reliability, efficiency and profitability
have become more readily accessible.
One of the biggest barriers to optimizing
Some plants – often belonging to larger, pure chemical companies and global
integrated players – are already ahead of the curve. These digital innovators or
operations and digitalization in general for those
champions have invested readily and regularly in equipment and are capturing in the early stages of the journey is finding the
their operational data via Distributed Control Systems (DCSs) or Manufacturing
Execution Systems (MESs).
time and expertise needed to do it properly.

Now they are embracing artificial intelligence (AI), cloud-based services, and
other advanced digital technologies to help them make decisions based on
current and relevant data, in order to more effectively and consistently reach
their operational goals.
Some may have recently installing process control systems (PCSs), and, in
some cases, data historians to store the information gathered from across their
operations. If they’re analyzing their data at all, it’s usually with basic tools such
as Excel rather than anything more advanced. And it’s time-consuming work that
remains prone to error.

Figure 2: Digital archetypes of plants in the chemical industry In fact, one of the biggest barriers to optimizing operations
and digitalization in general for those in the early stages
Digital Digital Digital Digital of the journey is the time and expertise needed to do it
beginners adopters innovators champions
properly. Resources that often can’t be spared from the
day-to-day running of operations.

So, while most producers recognize the potential of

technologies like AI to help anticipate threats to plant
availability and stamp out process inefficiencies, their first
challenge is to pinpoint their core business challenges and
the digital solutions likely to best address them.
6 Advance with intelligence. - A white paper from Navigance

The good news is help is available to help conduct such benefit assessments, The opportunity digitalization presents is to integrate continuous process data
build the business case for the technologies to help optimize operations, and into operational decision-making automatically. Using advanced technologies
take the steps needed to realize their potential. What’s more, the data plants are to remove time-consuming manual tasks, and pinpointing the patterns and
already gathering provides a solid foundation upon which to build. information that matter most almost instantly. Moving from retrospective
analysis and troubleshooting to a comprehensive and near-real-time view of how
Using plant data more effectively
the operation is running to inform confident, effective action and make the best
A typical chemical plant now has thousands of sensors collecting huge volumes of
use of all resources.
process and performance data. This information is used to help control the plant,
generate reporting, and may also be stored long term to support troubleshooting The AI advantage
and analytics. McKinsey5 believes AI represents nothing short of a paradigm shift for
manufacturing. A move away from hard-coded, expensive, inflexible,
Where such work is carried out, it’s often conducted retrospectively and at
first-principle-based solutions to adaptive self-learning solutions that use vast
irregular intervals, rather than routinely and in real time when it can make the
data and machine learning to smart effect.
greatest potential difference.
Machine learning, one of the building blocks and a specific subset of AI, enables
Much of this works is done manually, so depends on plants being able to
computers to spot patterns and relationships in both their experiences and
spare personnel for extended periods to conduct the required analysis. This is
available data, and so learn from them. Using its statistical methods and adaptive
challenging at any time, but especially given the current economic and industry
algorithms, computers can find previously unknown solutions and make decisions
conditions already described.
based on real data, with minimal human intervention, rather than follow explicit
Adding to the challenge is the sheer complexity of chemical manufacturing, with programming instructions.
its countless interconnected factors and overlaid effects, and the fact that data
The technology offers the potential to introduce clarity and predictability,
sources from multiple unit operations aren’t systematically linked and analyzed.
reducing errors and uncertainty while boosting productivity. For the chemical
For those tasked with measuring, analyzing, modeling, and implementing
sector, it means an end to time-consuming Excel-based data analysis and those
improvement actions, it means trying to find meaningful insights within
gut-feeling-based decisions. Instead, a robust, real-time online view helps
incomplete and often impenetrable data.
optimize plant production and control.
Though grounded in years of industry experience, decisions are usually made
using intuition or a gut feeling more than an irrefutable reading of all the facts. Over three quarters (76%) of industry experts
Not only is this a skill hard to pass on to future generations, but its results are
interviewed in the Navigance survey said they see
also imprecise. The sheer volume of data means even the keenest eyes are likely
to overlook important patterns or opportunities. And, if the data is only ever the potential of artificial intelligence technologies
historical, plant teams will always be on the back foot.
to improve the effectiveness of their operations.
7 Advance with intelligence. - A white paper from Navigance

Those that have already introduced industrial AI in the chemical sector are able to
anticipate and adapt to changing conditions, meet customer demand, accelerate
product innovation, generate higher margins, and outperform their peers.
In one example, a world-leading raw materials manufacturer introduced two
real-time optimizers into its phenol production process as part of its first
digital transformation project. Using machine leaning and predictive models to
recommend process improvements, it grew output of its phenol intermediate
product by 2.5% and production by over 5,500 tons a year – a value gain of USD
6
5.5 million.7
If you’re among the producers yet to implement or build a compelling business
case for these technologies, don’t despair. If you’ve already been gathering
and storing your plant data you hold a potential treasure trove. With the right
expertise, it could be the key to improving everything from uptime or throughput
to energy consumption or profitability.
in the same industry. That’s because machine learning algorithms need to be
carefully selected and combined to consider chemical process specifics. And
those trained with more data – covering more states and situations a plant or
asset could encounter – typically deliver better-quality outcomes.
It is also important to think ahead to the needs you’re likely to have to tomorrow,
and make sure the technologies and services you invest in now will fit comfortably
with any capabilities you’ll need to add later to meet future demands.
Whatever your level of digital maturity, Navigance believes there are three
common steps you can take to digitalize your operation the right way, at the
right pace. An approach that helps answer your most pressing priorities and the
associated technology needs in the right order, while complements your existing
investments.

To make or to buy? Mathematics &

statistical
New technology investments usually come with a choice of whether to make knowledge

or buy what you need. With specialist technologies such as machine learning,
AI project
there’s less of a choice – at least for now. Industrial
management
process
Successful & business
expertise
Putting it to work for you demands a range of skills: from how to build its & domain AI adoption & knowledge
knowledge integration in
algorithms to how to collect and integrate the data needed to train them, and organisation
ultimately oversee that training.

Figure 3 shows the mix of skills a business might typically need to develop IT & data
(AI and ML
AI for itself. The large investment of people, time, and money it requires sees Innovation development and
excellence implementation)
most manufacturers and producers join forces with external experts in machine
learning and data analytics.

In doing so, it’s important to ensure the partner you choose has extensive
knowledge in your domain or is, at least, already working with several companies Figure 3: The skills and expertise needed to deploy machine learning effectively are many, varied and often
difficult to find or bring in-house
8 Advance with intelligence. - A white paper from Navigance

DIGITALIZATION: A COMMON ROADMAP Keeping plants up and running

In this example from a methanol production plant, a leaking valve caused a
Step 1: advanced data visualization and sharing
higher intake of fresh air into the process, which risked causing a shutdown
For chemical producers in the earliest stages of digitalization, the first step is to
of the plant.
take the data being gathered across their plants and see, interpret, and use it
more effectively. During an initial drop in absorber top pressure, the Navigance Plant
Monitor spotted anomalies in other metrics too, including light and later
In most plants, their DCS, data historian(s) and any self-service tools – commonly
severe deviations between set and process values for the airflow to, and
deployed on-premise – help to provide a single view of the plant environment and
oxygen concentration at, the vaporizer inlet.
its processes. Plant teams can use this to conduct more advanced analysis of any
patterns they see in their real-time and historical data, share secure, rights-based By sending an aggregated alert of all of such anomalies as soon as they are
access and collaborate more effectively. detected, the Plant Monitor enables plant personnel to investigate and
mitigate against them before operations are impacted.
Navigance tools provide secure, cloud-based data visualization that allows
teams to view and share data across different locations, keeping plant personnel
continuously informed and, where needed, engaging partners too. A common
example might be granting a catalyst supplier being viewing rights to relevant
data so they can provide expert advice on how to maximize catalyst performance.

It’s an easy and effective way to tap into the right in-house or external expertise.
And it’s all done via a web-based service and interface, instead of drawn-out
email communications.

What’s more, data visualization and sharing of this kind creates the foundation
for doing much more your data too.

Step 2: increasing and maintaining plant availability

For plants still in the early stages of digitalization, the need is often to increase
or consistently maintain high plant availability. Once a clearer view of plant and
process data is in place, it’s easier to take the next step in order to achieve it.

Since any downtime reduces the capacity for production while increasing its
costs, a common feeling among plant teams – certainly those consulted in the
Figure 4: Here the Navigance Plant Monitor can be seen spotting anomalies relating to a
valve leakage ~2 weeks before they impacted one customer’s operation
9 Advance with intelligence. - A white paper from Navigance

Navigance study – is “the more availability we have the better.” And they recognize
this comes at the cost of higher investment in equipment and maintenance.
The opportunity digital tools present is to help focus that investment and
maintenance more precisely and effectively, anticipating, and intercepting issues
early, speeding up remedies, and reducing costs.
While some digital solutions have proven useful for retrospective analysis and
remedial action, it is possible to take a much more proactive approach. The
Navigance Plant Monitor, for instance, automatically monitors process variables
around the clock and provides proactive 24/7 alerting of any issues or deviations
it observes in the data.
Applying data-driven algorithms enables early warnings of, for instance, faster
rate-changes of variables, deviations from typical patterns, and similar unusual
behavior. This goes beyond setting fixed limits for individual variables, which is
15
Receiving these single alerts before any process limit is hit enables operational
teams to quickly pinpoint the potential root cause of any issues. They can then take
appropriate, focused, effective action quickly, before issues ever become problems.
Which reduces and potentially avoids altogether the risk of unplanned downtime.
Step 3: continuous optimization of process efficiency
Once a consistent, high level of availability has been achieved, the next step is
to use your plant’s data to fine-tune your chemical process. So when is the right
time to do so?
In responses to the Navigance industry survey, over 80% of experts asked said
they’d consider the shift once their plant was achieving a consistent Overall
Equipment Effectiveness (OEE) of 90% or above. And, as we’ve heard, over three
quarters saw artificial intelligence as a technology with real potential to add value
when they do.
Confidential

the traditional approach of alarm settings in traditional DCS systems and typically Figure 5: Theyour
Optimize Navigance process
process optimizationby
continuously cycle

includes low or high temperatures, flows, pressures, or vibrations. pro-actively fine tuning control variables
Our technologies deliver Dashboard & actionable
In DCS systems, an issue with a piece of equipment that impacts several sensors prescriptive actions recommendations

or trends often results in operators being flooded with alarms. This issue, already Navigance
ta
da d au
well known and investigated in the chemical industry8 , could lead to operators ss te process models to
ce oma m
o & data analysis at
pr aut ed

failing to recognize a critical situation.

In contrast, the Plant Monitor uses intelligent algorithms and aggregation methods Your plant

to send operators a single, meaningful, pre-aggregated alert of all anomalies, based

on the interconnection of several trends and Navigance’s expert knowledge of
implementation and specific, data-driven algorithms.
Proactive & dynamic adjustment
of process parameters by the operator

The Navigance Plant Monitor uses

intelligent algorithms and aggregation
Figure 5: The Navigance process optimization cycle delivers continuous recommendations plant teams can

methods to avoid alarm flooding. act upon with confidence to optimize their process.
10 Advance with intelligence. - A white paper from Navigance

With the Navigance Optimization Engine, a highly adaptive hybrid process model
is built to represent your plant and hosted in the cloud, where it’s augmented
with machine learning and other analytics tools.
A continuous stream of plant data that is uploaded securely into the cloud, and
automatically cleaned and prepared to remove all outliers, noise and discrepancies
using adaptive filters, pattern-matching heuristics and other additional
classification techniques. The AI-enhanced hybrid plant model then analyzes
this cleaned, near-real-time data to learn and spot patterns, identify potential for
efficiency improvements, and make round-the-clock recommendations.
Plant personnel can access these recommendations in an online dashboard
and take confident action to fine tune the relevant process control variables,
continuously optimizing their process towards achieving their particular goals.
As a truly full-service analytics solution, Navigance goes beyond the automatic
recommendations to provide a level of support not available with comparable
competitive platforms. This includes regular analysis of the plant’s data and
any patterns it displays by Navigance experts, with a view to providing ongoing
interpretation, insights and advice for continuous improvement.
Seeing benefits fast – a case study
In formaldehyde production, the raw material methanol makes up over
90% of the total production cost. The amount of product that methanol
yields is a vital KPI to measure and optimize. And it’s one Navigance helps
to improve.
At one large-scale formaldehyde producer, the Navigance Optimization
Engine was introduced in one of its many plants across multiple regions.
Within just three months, the unit’s formaldehyde yield increased gradually
by 0.8 mol% above the long-term average typically seen. All while the plant
operation was maintained at 100% capacity.
Key to this success were actionable recommendations on process control
variables derived from Navigance models, plus advice based on advanced
data analytics.
Just one example of the potential efficiency benefits formaldehyde
producers could enjoy within weeks using Navigance to continuously
optimize their process variables.

In this way, producers can take data-driven decision-making to new levels. Moving 20
Figure
Confidential
6: Case study: Continuous improvement of Formaldehyde yield
away from hours spent analyzing and cleaning data manually to a new era of Case study: Continuous improvement of Formaldehyde yield
after implementing Navigance
after implementing Navigance
effortless, continuous optimization. It’s a future some producers of chemicals are Monthly average efficiency in
Increasing monthly average
already seeing rapid benefits from today (see formaldehyde case study on the right). plant before Navigance
implementation
efficiency in plant after
Navigance implementation
Plant load ≥ 95%
Plant load < 95%

+0.8%

… while operating
mostly at 100%
plant load
11 Advance with intelligence. - A white paper from Navigance

THE NAVIGANCE DIFFERENCE

Navigance experts work with your plant team to: Cloud-based analysis: Actionable advice: Ongoing support:


Understand your plant
setup and process, available
data, constraints, plus your
availability or efficiency
goals and improvement
potential

Design and deploy a
Navigance solution specific
to your plant and needs

Navigance models, machine
Establish secure
connections and regular
uploads of your plant's data
to Navigance analytics
services in the cloud
  
You receive proactive alerts
to inform preventative Navigance experts contunie
learning algortithms and
other advanced analytics maintenance and/or to support you with ongoing
recommendations to help
tools interrogate your analysis, insights, and
fine tune process control optimization advice
near-real-time data for
issues and opportunities variables and optimize
efficiency

Figure 7: Navigance builds a detailed picture of your plant, process and priorities and combines digital tools and expertise to help you continuously optimize availability and efficiency. The full Navigance provides

a comprehensive, integrated solution for the digitization of your operation in the right way and at the right pace, and on a single, common platform you can extend to other processes and plants as needed.

A partner on your digitalization journey But where and how?

Most businesses know they need to digitalize but many lack a strategy for how or
the time it takes to implement what’s needed to do so. Even if you’re gathering
lots of data from across your operation it will be of little use without defined plans
for how to harness and monetize it effectively.
The market pressures are increasing to start – and start now.
Navigance offers long-standing chemical process and data science expertise to
help identify the improvement potential in digitalizing your operations through a
benefit assessment and build a compelling business case.
To help you realize that potential at pace, Navigance’s advanced, cloud-based
digital tools and services can be implemented quickly, with very little effort on
the part of your own team.

And, long after your solution is up and running, Navigance continues to provide
expert support and advice, and continuously evolve and improve the capabilities
of its cloud services.

IT’S TIME TO THINK TWICE

“Our operations team is focused on planning and
If these or other thoughts are holding you back from implementing digital implementing our next turnaround”
technologies to support your operations, it’s time to think again.
“We don’t have the resources
Implementing Navigance requires little time or resources and enables you to
to spare”
digitalize in the way that’s right for your operation.
Navigance aligns with your team and priorities and does the hard work for “We’re not ready to optimize”
you, so you can concentrate on fulfilling your plant’s critical goals.
12 Advance with intelligence. - A white paper from Navigance

SEE THE POTENTIAL. TALK TO NAVIGANCE FURTHER READING

BUILD THE BUSINESS TODAY
Find out more about digitization, Digitalization:
CASE.
Email: info@navigance.com process optimization and how a roadmap for chemical plants
Navigance experts can explore your Phone: +49 89 5110 140 Navigance helps you realize them in Exploring the three key steps to
plant setup and available data to our blog articles. digitalization for chemical plants.
Navigance GmbH
assess your digital readiness and
Rundfunkplatz 2 Optimizing with intelligence: Optimizing chemical production
potential to increase plant availability
80335 Munich a white paper using data-driven, AI-enabled hybrid
and optimize your chemical process.
Germany How AI-enabled data analysis turns modelling
Talk to us today to get your plant data into process optimization How hybrid process models driven
comprehensive report of our findings FIND OUT MORE potential. by data take process efficiency to a
and take your first steps towards 24/7 www.navigance.com higher level.
Digitalization:
monitoring, proactive alerting and
the landscape and needs Chemical process models – from first
round-the-clock optimization.
of chemical plants principle to hybrid models
What chemical producers told Comparing first principle models
Navigance they want and an overview with hybrids of empirical or statistical
of the digital landscape. techniques.

[Notes and references]

b
1
 log.navigance.com/digitalization-the-landscape-and-needs-of-chemical-plants
2
blog.navigance.com/why-you-need-to-optimize-now-part-1
3
Artificial Intelligence in Manufacturing Market by Offering (Hardware, Software, and Services), Technology (Machine Learning, Computer Vision, Context-Aware Computing, and NLP), Application,
Industry, and Geography – Global Forecast to 2025 by MarketsandMarkets.com
4
Insight: Surging chemical prices pressure construction costs, Al Greenwood, Independent Commodity Intelligence Services (July 2021, www.icis.com/explore/resources/news/2021/07/01/10658752/
insight-surging-chemical-prices-pressure-construction-costs
5
AI in production: A game changer for manufacturers with heavy assets – McKinsey & Company white paper (2019)
6
Cepsa Press release: “Cepsa optimizes its chemical processes with artificial intelligence-based technology”
www.cepsa.com/en/press/press%E2%80%93releases/Cepsa-optimizes-its-chemical-processes-with-artificialintelligence%E2%80%93based-technology
7
Calculation based on a market price of phenol of ~$1000 recorded in January 2020.
8
Alarm floods and plant incidents, Digital Refining
www.digitalrefining.com/article/1000558/alarm-floods-and-plant-incidents
*
Navigance interviewed close to 40 experts in chemical operations – especially those with continuous processes – across Europe, the Middle East, Africa, India and North America. Their roles ranged from
process engineers and plant managers to corporate digital and high-level management team members. These highly experienced professionals work in fields such as the production of ammonia, methanol,
ethylene oxide, maleic anhydride, fatty alcohols, formaldehyde, additives, as well as in refineries. Navigance also spoke to various technology vendors. The comprehensive study explored the realities
of plants’ daily operations, their needs, goals and immediate priorities, and the challenges they face in achieving them. It also examined how all of this affects where they are on their own journey to
digitalization, where they are on that journey now and where they feel digital could help them further.