Dow Polyurethanes, a business division of Dow, recently announced that it is accelerating its digital transformation through increased integration into artificial intelligence (AI) and predictive capabilities geared to increasing its digital IQ across all business operations. Dow is collaborating with Microsoft to accelerate the integration of machine learning and AI solutions into a novel predictive intelligence capability that that it expects will transform the product development process and enhance customer collaboration.

“What if we could harness the power of digitalization to become more innovative, customer-centric, inclusive and sustainable? This is the vision driving our digital transformation,” said Alan Robinson, North America commercial vice president at Dow Polyurethanes. “We are integrating new digital tools across all business operations to change the way we work and how customers do business with us. We are making our processes smarter and more cost-efficient, building novel capabilities to push the boundaries of innovation and improve our customer experience.”

Dow’s predictive intelligence capability is one of the flagship digitalization initiatives that the Polyurethanes business is implementing globally to improve the product formulation development process and accelerate time-to-market of differentiated solutions. Dow reports that it will benefit from Microsoft’s expertise and is using Microsoft Azure Machine Learning to develop and integrate machine learning and AI into its predictive capability. This will combine Dow’s materials science, reaction kinetics, and rheology with AI to predict trends and formulation properties and simulate customer processes through historical data, predictive math models, automated work processes, and scale-up apps.

A dedicated customer web portal will reportedly provide technical and product development support and allow customers to navigate the entire process—from product search to formulation to the final delivery—in a single interface. It will facilitate faster response times and the reduce number of trials for more efficient collaboration and speed to market. Dow will work closely with selected customers in the development phase to design the portal based on their needs.

“Customer-centricity is what drives us,” said Marcel Moeller, global marketing director at Dow Polyurethanes. “With our predictive intelligence capability, we are combining a digital channel with process digitization and AI to provide a modern and seamless customer experience across all digital touchpoints—from product search to product formulation, purchase decision to the final delivery process...”

For more information, visit www.dowpolyurethanes.com.