Experience counts

Traditionally, the German chemical majors prided themselves on their ability to perform every task in the field. Various departments handled basic and applied research and process development; in-house specialists designed and built the plants; home-grown engineers and technicians kept the plants running.

But over the past decade, the three majors - BASF, Bayer and Hoechst - have been forced to change, with more outsourcing, joint ventures, specialisations and, in the case of Hoechst, absorption into new ventures. Bayer, now specialising in life sciences, has chosen the reorganisation option. For the process industries as a whole, the most significant result of this is a new contracting company, Bayer Technology Services.

Bayer's reorganisation saw it split up into seven divisions, four 'operating' - healthcare, crop science, polymers and chemicals - and three 'service' - business services, industry services, and technology services. The main raison d'etre of the service companies is, of course, to serve the main corporation - Bayer Technology will continue to oversee the building of all Bayer plants. But as the service companies are legally independent, they are also free to offer their services on the open market.

Bayer Technology was formed from the former Bayer Central Research and Central Technology divisions. Its staff is organised into three technology divisions - process technology, engineering, and process management technology. Together, these operations account for 90 per cent of the company's 2200 employees.

To handle the transition from a division within a corporation to a multi-national player in its own right, the firm has also created a fourth department, business management, which is responsible for marketing and the management of orders, from lead through to offer and execution, and the final process of ensuring the customer is satisfied.

The employees are also spread throughout the world: as chairman and chief executive Werner Wagner points out, it's impossible to be a global player if you're only represented in Germany. The firm has an operation in Baytown, Texas handling projects in the US, Canada and Mexico; an Antwerp office covering the Benelux countries; and is planning operations in Mexico City and Sao Paolo to handle Central and South America. The smallest office houses 40 people in Shanghai, and the largest operation is in Germany, with 1700 people spread across five offices in Brünsbuttel, Krefeld-Uerdingen, Wuppertal-Ebberfleld, Dormagen and Bayer's headquarters in Leverkusen. Currently, these offices are all handling Bayer projects: 55 in progress, with another 46 in the planning stage.

Wagner claims that Bayer Technology can offer 150 process technologies, ranging from polymers - which accounts for most of its previous projects - through to pharmaceuticals and biotechnology. In the latter categories, it already has experience in building plants that use fermentation, high-throughout screening and chromatography.

Specialist performance

According to Wagner, the company's origin as part of a major chemicals producer is what sets it apart from its contracting competitors. 'There are many engineering companies around the world that build plants,' he concedes. 'But only a few have access to as much experience and interdisciplinary know-how as Bayer Technology Services.' The company is a specialist with the perspective of a generalist, he says.

This means that its engineers are not only used to working with existing process technologies, but they are equally focused on developing and adapting those technologies with the goal of producing high-quality products at a profit.

Interdisciplinary operations are at the heart of Bayer's working practices. With staff drawn from both the basic research and engineering development arms of the original business, the company has chemists, mathematicians, biologists and physicists working under the same roof as chemical, electrical, civil and mechanical engineers.

Bayer sees its predictive optimum maintenance timing service as one of its most important specialisations. The company installs sensors throughout the plant and analyses their output to predict the best intervals for maintenance work to be carried out. For example, it can install probes in pipelines and reactors to monitor corrosion during operation. Possible trouble spots can be spotted and dealt with quickly, and long before they become a major problem.

One speciality of Bayer's engineers is in expansion projects, Wagner says. This is done using a system-oriented approach, he explains. The actual modification work is generally carried out in an extremely short time, because before it begins, the company ensures that the structure, machinery, piping and process management systems are all available on-schedule and in the required quality.

The company's expertise also extends to process control. ' We have mastered processes and technological complexity using supply chain optimisation, manufacturing execution systems, knowledge-based process control and monitoring as well as innovative process control systems,' Wagner says.

'We also use methods such as performance monitoring and asset management to optimise production conditions, from energy consumption to raw material yield.' In particular, Bayer employs energy managers and procurement agents who can analyse the energy demands of a facility and ensure that all utilities are supplied to the plant in the required quantities - and at the optimum price.

To achieve this, Bayer has developed a system called PerMonDO (Performance Monitoring Methodology). This uses data, gathered over time, to generate performance indicators that show which parts of the process are running at optimum energy efficiency. This allows operators to tweak the performance as close to optimum as possible.

The company has already achieved impressive financial results. Of its E690million sales in 2002, some E45million came from external customers. 'We aim to strongly increase this contribution over the next few years,' Wagner says.