Nouryon is a worldwide leader in manufacturing everyday products, such as personal care, cleaning goods, paints and coatings, agriculture and food, pharmaceuticals, and building products.  Nouryon and Unite-X have been partners for many years.

Within Nouryon’s processes, Unite-X focusses on aligning safety and efficiency. This includes challenges such as alignment between departments’ KPI’s.

Instead of different departments aiming to accomplish either production optimalization or zero incidents, smart KPI’s make sure that departments strengthen each other’s goals, resulting in Operational Safety Excellence: the optimal balance between production efficiency and safety levels.

This not only solves a large challenge for the HSE officer, it has proven to be successful on the work floor and for management goals.

SABIC and Unite-X have been partners for over 10 years. In 2012 SABIC (Geleen, the Netherlands) implemented a site-wide shift handover procedure, combined with Unite-X’ (former iB&X) ShiftCliq software, the predecessor of Unite-Production Communication.

Initially, SABIC was searching for a program, but in Unite-X they have found not only the right tooling, also a smart way of thinking and a certain way of working, which SABIC sees as a huge bonus. Also, for SABIC it was very important to have only one solution for all their fully integrated connected plants.

The buy-in took place in October 2011, in February 2012 SABIC was able to do the vendor selection and in June the same year it was already time for the roll-outs and logistics. The cooperation resulted in a quick timeline where one plant after another received rapid implementation.

Pascal van Vlodrop (SABIC cluster shift supervisor Olefins 3/4):

“The trainings and roll-outs went really smooth, without any problems. When we talked to colleagues of other plants, they also confirmed everything went very smooth.
It was a very good decision to implement one shift book that all of our plants could use, now we are able to look into the shift books of our colleagues.”

SABIC states that their work has become a lot easier since they implemented the Unite-X solution. Now there is only one system that provides everyone with the right information. In the past there were five or six sources for all data, which led to opportunities for errors, but now nothing can be overseen, since one source for all data results in transparency and clear processes.

In the video you can see how SABIC perceived their partnership with Unite-X.

DSM and Unite-X have a long story of cooperation. Unite-X has been collaborating with DSM on supporting the Life Saving Rules and improving safety results for more than ten years now.

The cooperation started with the implementation of the Unite-Permit to Work on a small number of sites and developed into a global rollout of Permit to Work and LoToTo in 2016.

DSM has decided that the solution of Unite-X was compliant with their criteria and would support them in achieving their goals of spreading a global safety standard both in functionality and implementation requirements.

Herman Bruns, Corporate SHE Expert at DSM, gives more detail on the various aspects of a global implementation. Watch the video ->

In 2017, the implementation of Unite-Permit to Work was mentioned in DSM’s integrated annual 2017 year report.

One year later, in 2018, DSM stated:

“After successful implementation at several sites in Europe and the US, DSM Operations & Responsible Care asked Sourcing to negotiate a global contract for the implementation of Permit to Work and LoToTo by iB&X. DSM Sourcing Europe advocated this tool to improve contractor safety and improve efficiency in work planning at the Europe production sites. iB&X adapted their way of implementing and reporting to also report on improved efficiency.”

In 2023, cooperation continues, bringing global safety awareness of DSM-Firmenich teams across the globe to a new level of Operational Safety Excellence.

The global implementation of the Permit to Work and the LoToTo process delivers measurable improvements to DSM’s safety track record. Building and implementing a global standard for Permit to Work allows DSM to compare, share, learn, and improve, supporting the continuous improvement cycle.

Moreover, teams successfully adapt corporate initiatives while supporting local specifics and customs, uniting around achieving maximum safety and efficiency.