It is still difficult for industrial companies to understand why they are in need of digital transformation. The ideal future for the industry will be not just the automation of the existing processes, but the establishment of new business models. This and other topics were discussed at Nobel Vision. Open Innovations 2.0, a major international conference held yesterday at Skolkovo on the outskirts of Moscow and via online streams. The topic “Popular Industry. The industry is ripe for digital transformation” was part of the event’s rich program.
Alexey Belyakov, Vice President, Executive Director of the advanced manufacturing technology cluster of the Skolkovo Foundation, noted that digital transformation in many sectors — in retail, banking and e-commerce, for example — was taking place 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.
Oleg Fomichev, Complexprom’s Strategic Planning and Development Director, noted that CEOs and shareholders should develop strategies, setting goals and outlining a first set of IT projects: “The hardest thing to go through is team building, finances, organizational changes for the company to move in the right direction and build standard business processes”.
Yekaterina Dyachenko, Project Director at Cyberstal Project, said her young company, which is building 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 VEB Ventures CEO 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.
