Supply Chain Digitization Drives Business Value at Henkel

For Henkel, a chemical and consumer goods company, using analytics to gain insight into the supply chain has become hard-coded into its DNA over the past several years. With $20 billion in sales, the Düsseldorf, Germany-based company has three divisions: adhesive technologies, laundry and home care, and beauty care. Like other organizations, Henkel began a supply chain digitization journey several years ago, primarily to curb costs and become more efficient. But its initial foray into deploying Internet of Things (IoT) sensors to track various aspects of its supply chain – from manufacture and product supply to truck logistics and customer demand – gave way to a digital way of doing business that is automated, data-driven and agile in the face of rapid change. As moderator of a session on supply chain digitization at the Industrial AI Summit, Richard Self noted that Henkel's digitization brought the kind of ROI that companies seek when they introduce sensors, analytics dashboards and IoT applications into their environments.