Naveen Gupta

Global Head Data Governance and Analytics, Archroma

Supernova Award Category: 
ESG & Sustainability
The Organization: 

Archroma is a global, diversified provider of specialty chemicals serving the branded and performance textiles, packaging and paper, and coatings, adhesives and sealants markets. It aims to become carbon neutral by 2023.

Headquartered in Pratteln, Switzerland, the company operates a highly integrated, customer-focused platform that delivers specialized performance and color solutions in over 100 countries.

Archroma works with 2,800 employees in 31 countries and with 25 production sites.

Archroma has knowledge and experience of chemistry and industry spanning more than 130 years.

The Problem: 

The first challenge was internal, driven by cost factors and Archroma’s value of sustainability that is safe, efficient and enhanced. These governing terms of Archroma’s sustainability efforts led the organization to define and implement its sustainability and performance strategy. The second challenge was more complex and driven by customers. Spurred by its public commitment to reduce emissions, Archroma received a rising number of customer inquiries about the carbon footprint of its products. Archroma engaged Celonis to specifically understand the carbon emissions emitted per product per kilogram throughout the supply chain, from the warehouse to the customer. The company lacked insights into shipment capacity utilization. Archroma and Celonis co-innovated a pilot project focused on the order-to-cash process and tracking outbound shipping emissions.  Archroma sought granular, data-driven and automated quantification of these foundational processes and wanted to act on the insights gathered to drive increases in sustainability. Archroma chose to work with Celonis because of its Execution Management System (EMS) platform that reveals and fixes inefficiencies hidden within business processes. The EMS extracts data from IT systems and increases sustainability by reducing inefficiency, like reducing carbon emissions by optimizing shipments. Archroma uses the EMS as its supply chain integration platform and operational tower for its core KPIs. 

The Solution: 

First, Archroma and Celonis quantified global production and outbound shipping emissions, and calculated inbound shipping emissions via an Archoma and customer cross company data sharing pilot. Next we integrated supplier sustainability ratings data (that previously needed to be manually analyzed and was hindering decision making) for supplier performance management and measured the product’s complete environmental footprint. An interdisciplinary pilot kicked off in summer 2021. Following discovery workshops, it gained approval from Archroma’s Chief Digital and Sustainability Officers. The project sought to provide greater transparency, granularity and customer satisfaction, and potentially to lead to higher revenue from greener future products. Quantifying shipping emissions required the extraction of ERP data on addresses, shipping type and weight. Celonis partner Planetly helped calculate the distance traveled by shipments before emissions factors were applied.

The Results: 

Archroma had no granular results or benchmarks. It had little visibility and understanding of processes and emissions and now has transparency insights into processes and interdependencies between emissions and operations. Today, Archroma’s precise performance baseline includes outbound shipping emissions and insights to delivery processes, products sold, and shipment routes. Shipment weight and truck capacity insights, identified opportunities to bundle, reducing cost and emissions. Customer relationships also improved by sharing order emissions data.Clarity and actionable insights help operationalize and scale sustainability practices, reducing Archroma’s carbon footprint process steps and decisions. The strategy of process efficiency and cost of inefficiency and trade-offs, is a business case for sustainable actions. Further, Archroma demonstrates clear steps to carbon neutrality in 2023. Archroma, with support from Celonis, built an end-to-end product sustainability footprint, and implemented the building blocks of a product’s holistic environmental footprint – focusing on product life cycle, from raw materials used, components added, production energy and steps before products reach customers. This approach prevents negative impacts across the supply chain. It enables sharing of product environmental footprint data in a transparent, verifiable and accountable way that – before Celonis – was not possible.  

Metrics: 

So far, Archroma has quantified the CO2 emissions of more than 150,000 shipments and identified a potential 6% reduction in emissions. Today, Archroma has complete transparency of its operational processes. It provides a precise performance baseline for outbound shipping emissions, insights into the delivery processes, products sold, and advises on the use of appropriate shipment routes. Because it gained insights into the weight of shipments and the capacity utilization of trucks via the Celonis EMS, Archroma identified opportunities to bundle shipments, reducing both cost and emissions. The EMS also helped Archroma identify ways to improve customer relationships by sharing data related to emissions generated by orders with its customers. Within less than 12 months, Archroma succeeded in establishing an end-to-end product sustainability footprint, and implemented the first building blocks towards defining a product's holistic environmental footprint. This involves an assessment focused on the entire product lifecycle, from the raw materials used, components added in the factories, energy used during the production process and all other steps before the customer receives the product.

The Technology: 

Celonis’ EMS is a secure, fast, scalable cloud platform: it integrates real-time transactional and analytical systems data at scale with 100+ pre-built connectors. Process Intelligence uses process mining and ML to visualize what’s happening in processes, surfacing digital truth. Advanced algorithms and ML, combined with deep industry and process domain expertise, recommend what to fix and how. Prioritizied EMS recommendations trigger targeted actions to fix inefficiencies. 

Disruptive Factor: 

Inefficiencies lead to missed opportunities; cause higher operational costs; increase employee turnover; and result in higher carbon emissions. With the ever-more urgent need for sustainability, rising inflation and ongoing supply chain issues, only efficient businesses will thrive. Celonis is system-agnostic, sitting on top of customers’ existing systems to fix what’s broken and providing the option to delay a costly and time-intensive major systems overhaul. It breaks system bottlenecks and delivers holistic data insights and actions to streamline customers’ supply chain systems, saving them heavy lifting when faced with the choice of “how” to modernize those environments. The Celonis EMS helps companies to establish an end-to-end product sustainability footprint, and implement the building blocks toward defining a product's holistic environmental footprint. This involves an assessment focused on the entire product lifecycle, from raw materials used, components added in the factories, energy used during the production process and all other steps before the customer receives the product. Celonis announced in 2022 its acquisition of PAF and launched Celonis Experiences for Microsoft to enable Power Platform users to use Celonis insights from their EMS. 

Shining Moment: 

Archroma has quantified the CO2 emissions of more than 150,000 shipments and identified a potential 6% reduction in emissions, plus:

  • Automated integration of data sources for a single source of truth
  • Reporting on supplier sustainability performance
  • Alerts for significant spend with unrated suppliers
  • Ability to flag orders with suppliers that do not meet sustainability standards
  • Connect supplier sustainability ratings with sold products to enable transparency & data sharing

About Archroma

Archroma is passionate about delivering leading and innovative solutions, enhancing people’s lives and respecting the planet. The company is committed to the principles of "The Archroma Way to a Sustainable World: Safe, Efficient, Enhanced. It's our nature!"; an approach reflected in its innovations, world-class quality standards, high service levels and cost-efficiency.