The ‘Safe Pair of Hands’ Problem in Succession Planning
In a chemical facility, choosing the person who feels safest is understandable. These are high-risk environments where poor decisions can affect production, people and plant. Nobody wants to experiment with leadership when the consequences of getting it wrong can be dire.
The problem is that competence is not the same as readiness, and familiarity is not the same as low risk. When succession decisions repeatedly favor the people who already look, sound and operate like current leaders, organizations may believe they are reducing risk. In reality, they may be reproducing it.
Listen to this In Case You Missed It episode of Lauren Neal's workforce column. You can read the column here.
2 Oct 2026
Operational Flexibility Is an Energy Asset — If You Manage It Right
Schneider Electric's Thomas Kwan explains why chemical plants should map their loads before buying software, and why "the optimizer decides" isn't an operating philosophy.
Jonathan Katz, executive editor of Chemical Processing, recently spoke with Thomas Kwan, an energy transition expert at the Schneider Electric Sustainability Research Institute, about his most recent Energy Saver column for Chemical Processing, titled "The Flexible Chemical Plant: Scheduling Energy Use Without Sacrificing Throughput." Kwan, whose official title at Schneider is global vice president of strategic innovation and industrial ecosystems, wrote about how electrified compressors, separations and utilities can behave more like power brokers whose price refreshes every hour. He noted that plants running through a price spike are paying for steady-state, continuous operation they may not need, and he suggested that, to save energy, they must consider operational flexibility itself an energy asset. Kwan asked readers whether they knew which loads in their operation can move by minutes or hours, what that movement is worth under their energy tariff, and when product commitments, catalyst constraints or safety margins erase the benefit before it reaches the ledger.
25 Sept 2026
Courts, Settlements and Capacity Bets
In September's Distilled News, a federal appeals court strikes down the EPA's methylene chloride ban, three chemical makers agree to pay $455 million over PFAS, and BASF and Kemira look at new production.
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