Organizational & operating model
Our Business Groups are the main building-blocks of the company’s organization. They have integral long-term and short-term responsibility for business and have at their disposal all functions that are crucial to their business success. As the company’s primary organizational and entrepreneurial building blocks, our Business Groups focus on the following primary business driven functions: Science, Operations, Sourcing, Supply Chain and Global Products & Strategic Alliances.
With effect from 1 January 2022, we have transformed ourselves into a Health, Nutrition & Bioscience company with three Business Groups – Animal Nutrition & Health, Health, Nutrition & Care and Food & Beverage – each with clear opportunities to benefit the health of people and the health of the planet, underpinning our growth plans. Our Health, Nutrition & Bioscience strategy is underpinned by our ‘global products, local solutions’ business model and complemented by our growing competences in the rapidly emerging area of precision and personalization. Innovation has been integrated much more closely with our end-market orientation in Health, Nutrition & Bioscience. In order to ensure sufficient independence regarding financial management, the CFO has no Business Groups reporting to her, as has always been the case.
Our Business Groups receive enabling services from various global support and corporate functions, and are supported by the regional organizations. This set-up enables us to create a global, high-performing organization focused on meeting its targets and achieving its ambitions. The support functions and functional excellence departments are paid for their services by the users – the Business Groups and, to a lesser extent, other DSM units. Corporate departments are paid from a corporate budget.
Support and corporate functions provide those services that can be delivered more efficiently (in terms of total cost of ownership) by leveraging them across the company, thus capturing benefits of scale and delivering higher quality at lower cost, rather than having them arranged in each Business Group separately. There are support and corporate functions in the areas of Finance, People & Organization, Global Business Services, Digital, Strategy, M&A, Communications & Branding, Corporate Audit & Compliance, Legal, Risk, Investor Relations and Sustainability. Each support function reports to a Managing Board member or a member of the Executive Committee.
Within support functions, centers of expertise provide specialist support, while shared service centers provide standard transactional support. Business partnering is the concept that acts as the interface between the Business Groups and the support functions. Business partners consequently have a second reporting line in the business. In order to ensure that the functional policies sufficiently reflect regional requirements, the support functions work closely with the regional organizations and integrate their advice.
Functional excellence departments are mandated by the Managing Board to help the businesses achieve excellence in their respective fields. They cover the areas of Operational Excellence and Safety, Health and Environment. Functional excellence departments support our businesses in improving their performance. They also provide guidance in setting aspiration levels and targets.
