CLARIANT
Markus
Mirgeler from Clariant International talks about sustainability
“ Our focus is where we can have technologies help us to make smarter decisions on when we buy , where we buy and how we buy ”
MARKUS MIRGELER HEAD OF GLOBAL PROCUREMENT , CLARIANT
Giving an example of what he means , Mirgeler says “ if you look into catalysts , what is the raw material of a catalyst that we ' re supplying to an industrial application .
More and more questions arise ‘ where are the materials coming from ? What are the mining operations ? What about child labour ?’ Industry to industry we are seeing a much higher level of responsibility and curiosity around transparency of value chains . For the chemical industry this is quite new .”
When it comes to procurement transparency at Clariant , Mirgeler reflects that the company has been using automation for many years , “ It wasn ' t probably called digital at the time , but we have a really seamless process . We have a fully automated rate of 80 % of our purchase orders from demand to placing it at the supplier .” In addition to this automation , Mirgeler also explains that Clariant has a negotiations robot available . However , he adds that the big question is “ how much do you want to automate ? Clariant has 25,000 suppliers , and a lot of orders in the chemicals industry are repetitive . Without automation , we wouldn ’ t be able to manage .” supplychaindigital . com 101