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December 2018 www.intellinews.com I Page 6
using technology to boost their business, but a lot more dour industries, like metallurgy, have joined the train recently.
Metalloinvest, one of the Russia’s leading steel and mining companies, has been pursuing a digitization strategy since 2016, dubbing the programme Industry 4.a0. The scheme is focused on standardising the company's processes and stepping up flexibility and speed in reacting to internal and external challenges.
"The world is changing enormously fast," Yuri Gavrilov, the company's director for strategy, development and transformation, told Vedomosti. "We need to adapt, and to adapt quickly. However, speed is achievable only when the company is manageable and processes can be adjusted with lightning speed."
"To achieve that, we need, among other things, to change the principles of interaction between our employees and modes of collaboration with suppliers, and customers," he added.
Using SAP S/4HANA as the digital core of its plat- form, Metalloinvest originally applied new solutions at Lebedinsky and Mikhailovsky mining and processing enterprises before scaling them to the entire com- pany. As a result, the time required for bureau- cratic procedures was reduced by about a quarter.
Within the framework of the overall scheme, sev- eral initiatives are being implemented, including those focused on switching to e-documentation and maintaining information security.
The company aims to complete its digital switch by mid-2019, when the rollout of the digital solu- tion is expected to be completed at the company’s plants of Oskol Steel Mill and Urals Steel.
Meanwhile, oil giant Gazprom Neft has even more ambitious plans for its digital transformation das it expects to not only benefit from cutting-edge digital technologies but also eventually become an IT leader among local companies.
One of the directions of the company's digital transformation is development of a digital platform to manage information flows and datasets, which at a later stage could be opened up to the company's partners and contractors.
Similarly to most companies in the energy exploration and supply sector, Gazprom Neft is focused on a physical product. As a result, the company heavily uses digital doubles, which allows engineers based thousands of kilometres from the oil fields to test and control operation of the equipment.
Gazprom Neft is in the process of finding applica- tions for digital solutions across the company's entire diverse business, which includes oil ex- ploration, extraction, processing, transportation, sales and supply.
The oil major is also focused on unification of the company's financial and accounting processes on the basis of digital templates, which has already resulted in annual savings of RUB70mn ($1.1mn). Further cost savings are expected from currently run programmes for streamlining accounting and switching to paperless documents.
Meanwhile, The United Engine Corporation (UEC), a major helicopter engine manufacturer controlled by the government-owned engineering corpora- tion Rostech, is focusing its digital transformation plans on Internet of Things (IoT) technology.
The company recently launched a scheme that could take the use of IoT in Russia's heavy industry to a new level.
"It could become one of the largest projects in Russia in the area of adopting industrial IoT, as about 700 work places are expected to be digitized," the company said.
IoT will be primarily applied to monitoring equipment at the company's 12 industrial sites, and the scheme is expected to raise the workload of the equipment by 20%.