  The object W33 is a giant molecular cloud that contains star forming regions
at various evolutionary stages from quiescent clumps to developed H II regions.
Since its star forming regions are located at the same distance and the primary
material of the birth clouds is probably similar, we conducted a comparative
chemical study to trace the chemical footprint of the different phases of
evolution. We observed six clumps in W33 with the Atacama Pathfinder Experiment
(APEX) telescope at 280 GHz and the Submillimeter Array (SMA) at 230 GHz. We
detected 27 transitions of 10 different molecules in the APEX data and 52
transitions of 16 different molecules in the SMA data. The chemistry on scales
larger than $\sim$0.2 pc, which are traced by the APEX data, becomes more
complex and diverse the more evolved the star forming region is. On smaller
scales traced by the SMA data, the chemical complexity and diversity increase
up to the hot core stage. In the H II region phase, the SMA spectra resemble
the spectra of the protostellar phase. Either these more complex molecules are
destroyed or their emission is not compact enough to be detected with the SMA.
Synthetic spectra modelling of the H$_{2}$CO transitions, as detected with the
APEX telescope, shows that both a warm and a cold component are needed to
obtain a good fit to the emission for all sources except for W33 Main1. The
temperatures and column densities of the two components increase during the
evolution of the star forming regions. The integrated intensity ratios
N$_{2}$H$^{+}$(3$-$2)/CS(6$-$5) and
N$_{2}$H$^{+}$(3$-$2)/H$_{2}$CO(4$_{2,2}$$-$3$_{2,1}$) show clear trends as a
function of evolutionary stage, luminosity, luminosity-to-mass ratio, and
H$_{2}$ peak column density of the clumps and might be usable as chemical
clocks.
