Innovation is key to the success of any organization, and LyondellBasell employees have been especially focused on innovating people, projects and ideas. Recently, employees globally were offered an opportunity to participate in the company’s inaugural, month-long Digital Innovation Challenge. The challenge was hosted by the company’s Digital Transformation team with a goal of streamlining efficiencies and driving digitalization.
Given the growing movement toward low-code development, which is the creation of software through a graphical user interface instead of the traditional hand-coded computer programming, the Digital Transformation team asked employees to focus on developing low-code solutions to real company challenges. Employees also had the option of developing solutions that do not require any coding.
“The goal of the Digital Innovation Challenge was to foster a culture of entrepreneurship and innovation,” said Benjamin Hoff, LyondellBasell manager, Digital Value Chain and Mobility and Digital Innovation Challenge chair. “We wanted to encourage people who are using these digital tools to be the ones who had the opportunity to enhance them.”
A steering team comprised of nine employees across different business units and facilities was created to lead the challenge. Teams were selected at random and given three weeks to come together, identify a project, create a solution and put together a demonstration to present their idea to a slate of judges.
“This challenge was intense, but really enjoyable,” said Bruno Viala, LyondellBasell specialist, Inside Sale Process Improvement and member of the Digital Innovation Challenge winning team. “This contest provided a great opportunity to interact with people from different positions and divisions in our company that I would usually not have had an opportunity to work with.”
Viala’s team created a customer contract data entry automation system that will enhance efficiency and drastically reduce risk of errors. Additional projects spanned from streamlining customer service requests to a mobile app that allows quick access to chemical handling safety information for labs. The top two projects will be integrated into the company’s IT environment, upgraded and launched to the enterprise.
Since the event was the first of its kind at LyondellBasell, the Digital Transformation team planned for a small contest with approximately 30-40 participants. However, more than 300 employees signed up to join the challenge. Employees had a unique opportunity to collaborate on developing solutions-based projects with colleagues from around the world. #TeamLYB
