Industrial digitalization is still hardly understandable in Russia: Experts

MOSCOW, Dec 8, 2021, Pan Pacific Agency. Industrial digitalization as the part of the new business models for industrial companies were discussed during “Popular Industry. The industry is ripe for digital transformation” at the “Nobel Vision. Open Innovations 2.0” Forum, the press service of the event told Pan Pacific Agency. The discussion’s participants highlighted, that for industrial companies it’s still difficult to understand why they’re in need of digital transformation.

The Vice President, Executive Director of the advanced manufacturing technology cluster of the Skolkovo Foundation, Alexey Belyakov, noted that digital transformation in many sectors — in retail, banking and e-commerce, for example, was happening very rapidly and naturally. However, in the industry, where the difficulties of switching to “digit” are associated with a longer product life cycle, volume of investments and their return, the situation was not so optimistic, the moderator added.

The Strategic Planning and Development Director of Complexprom, Oleg Fomichev, noted that Chief Executive Officers and representatives of the companies’ shareholders would have to write strategies, to define goals and to represent the first set of IT projects: “The hardest thing to go through is team building, finances, organizational changes within the company that will allow them to move in the right direction and to build standard business processes”.

The Project Director of “Cyberstal Project”, Yekaterina Dyachenko, stated that their young company, which is constructing a steel mill “in an open field” without using any old facilities, is experiencing new opportunities: there is no need to break anything, one can construct from scratch in digital form.

“Our history is unique. We want to construct in the BIM format (Building Information Modeling) in a conservative industry. Our top priority task is to create a robotic unmanned production as the result. For metallurgy, this approach is innovative in terms of the combination of technologies, production and sales”, said Ekaterina Dyachenko.

Everyone realizes that the 4.0 revolution is a fait accompli, but its pace does not always suit the market, shareholders and investors. According to the opinion of the Chief Executive Officer of VEB Ventures, Oleg Teplov, the transfer of industrial enterprises to “digit” will first affect not the main production but the related areas — personnel, logistics, procurement and other areas like that.

“On the one hand, there is a desire to digitize processes, which will lead to an increase in the capitalization of companies. On the other hand, many employees are worried that they can lose their jobs”, recalled Oleg Teplov. The speaker called the digital projects in the field of Food Tech and Internet of Things to be the most user-friendly, and they would lead other industries and services as well.

The Chief Executive Officer of the Novoangarsky Dressing Plant, Vladimir Guriev, stressed that automation was indispensable in the mineral extraction, because all the processes needed the maximum precision, required the innovative solutions and approaches: “But a human factor exists everywhere, and if we want to neutralize it, then we need to switch to software products”.

Industrial enterprises have a huge demand for digitalization, but there are also significant “pitfalls”, says Sergei Nikolaev, CEO of Cyberphysics: “Problems arise when you stop communicating with managers and scientists and face real production. It’s very non-digital, the environment is harsh and hot. And people in workshops still experience healthy skepticism. Although a positive trend has already emerged”.

There is a very large focus on the desire for digitalization among business owners and CEOs, but these aspirations should be shared by the entire company, agrees Jörg Derler, partner of Deloitte Consulting in Moscow. Only after having a dialogue with employees we can move towards the introduction of innovative products.

Tags: Russia