In 2020, several Russian industries made a quantum leap: banks actively implemented
Industry was mostly busysurvival. The flagships of the economy suffered the most. For example, crude oil and gas production decreased by 10%. Nevertheless, the need, even in such conditions, to invest in new technologies is recognized by industry participants at the global level. According to a survey by Ernst & Young, 80% of the largest oil and gas companies are going to invest in transformation, 29% - on a particularly large scale.
What technologies does the Russian industry invest in?
According to a HSE survey conducted beforeSince the beginning of the pandemic, industrial leaders are planning to invest mainly in four groups of technologies in the coming years. They can also be called leaders in implementation at the beginning of 2020. Even before the coronavirus crisis, investment strategies were restrained, so we can hardly expect significant changes in the investment picture. Enterprises will develop those solutions that have already reached a productivity plateau.
- Industrial robots and automated lines - 44.5%. In Russia there are at least a dozenmanufacturers of industrial robots. Previously, solutions from foreign manufacturers were primarily popular, but now active import substitution is taking place. The highest degree of implementation is in the automotive industry and mechanical engineering. At the same time, the dynamics of technology distribution are still 20 times lower than the world average.
However, almost all large enterprisesor otherwise already use industrial robots in processes such as moving objects, welding or palletizing. For example, the Surgutneftepromkhim and Multiflex plants use domestic robots from Record-Engineering, and the Cheryomushki Design Bureau uses Bitrobotics delta robots. One of the largest recent large-scale implementation projects is the complete robotization of logistics at the Gazpromneft warehouse in Moscow.
- Computer engineering - 41%.Design automation using AI- one of the key pillars of production automation. Systems for geometric modeling of objects solve design, calculation and technological problems at the enterprise. They allow you to create more standardized parts, thereby reducing their cost, and also reduce design time by 30–40%. Some corporations create such products in-house, tailored to the needs of the industry - for example, Rosatom brought an initially internal development to the market. In general, in this area the domestic IT market successfully supplies import-substituting solutions.
- Technologies for collecting, processing and analyzing big data, including predictive analytics - 36%. They show the greatest penetration inprocesses not related to direct production - for example, in accounting, finance and HR. Big data is still little involved in the creation of the final industrial product - only 4%. The first data-driven enterprise in Russia may well be Sibur, which is engaged in the consistent digitization of all information and its consolidation into a single system of dashboards, as well as the deployment of a system of digital twins.
Technologies for collecting, processing and analyzing datanecessary for creating digital twins, virtual prototypes of industrial objects and processes. In Russia, the oil and gas and petrochemical industries, mechanical engineering and transport industries are most actively involved in their implementation - Gazpromneft, KamAZ, EVRAZ and others. Digital twins are not static; they “mirror” real changes in objects and processes by collecting data from various sources, including IoT.
- Industrial Internet of Things - 26%.
Data obtained from IIoT is still usedonly about 16% of enterprises, although it is the Internet of Things that allows you to configure services to create a more unified product, as well as engage in prognosis - early warning of breakdowns and accidents. For example, the Russian IIoT predictive analytics system PRANA is installed at 22 power units across the country and predicts breakdowns of generating equipment 2-3 months before they may occur. Under the control of the system, 3.5 GW of capacity is connected to equipment from various manufacturers and destinations with a total value of about $5 billion. The system records deviations in equipment operation within a second, ranks them by degree of danger and issues recommendations to the personnel involved in operation, including through automatic calls and push notifications. As a result, accidents are prevented, the number of incidents is reduced and damage from downtime of enterprise capacity is minimized, since defects are identified even before breakdowns. This allows you to plan the purchase of spare parts in advance, optimize logistics, and reduce the amount of inventory. By the way, insurance companies calculate the rate for enterprises whose equipment is under such protection using different coefficients.
Russian traditional industries will have tocatching up: Globally, industrial IoT penetration leads all other industries at 22%, according to IoT Analytics. Domestic enterprises probably understand this as well. Despite some decline in the IIoT market in the last crisis year, IKS Consulting forecasts growth in the period 2021–2023 at approximately 3%. The oil and mining industries are most actively implementing the Industrial Internet of Things - such systems have been partially implemented at the facilities of Lukoil-NK, Rosneft, Russian Coal, SUEK-Khakassia, and Tatburneft. Sibur launched its own IoT platform last year.
High gain investment also expected in RFID technology, cybersecurity, service robots and artificial intelligence.
At the pilot stage
At the same time, hype technologies that are acceptedassociated with the fourth industrial revolution, Russian enterprises are in no hurry to adapt. A typical example is augmented reality. In production, it performs the function of visualizing instructions directly during the assembly or configuration process, which allows you not to be distracted and saves time resources by approximately 8–25% depending on the process, as the General Electric case showed.
In the Russian industry, augmentedreality is not a trend, but rather individual pilots. Despite the fact that stakeholders say that the situation is turning in favor of AR, independent experts are still more restrained. For example, SAP CIS considers such an estimate to be overestimated. Several dozen enterprises are experimenting with the technology, mainly large ones - Gazpromneft, Sibur, NLMK, Russian Helicopters, KamAZ, Russian Railways, EVRAZ and others.
Another hype technology concept 4.0 is additive manufacturing, which has already found widespread use in industry around the world, with the automotive industry leading the way. In Russia, it is still used for prototyping parts, but not for their mass production (for example, this is what the GAZ group does). This is unlikely to happen in the near future: for now the cost of the technology is such that it is justified only in small-scale production of complex products.
Beyond the hype
Besides robots, there is a whole spectrum of physicaltechnologies that are slightly less interesting in terms of futurology than, say, augmented reality. But they do have important effects that the industry needs to lower costs and increase productivity.
For example, these include technologyX-ray inspection, which is increasingly used in the automotive and aviation industries, food and pharmaceutical industries. It is more effective than metal detectors in identifying defects in a variety of metal products and identifying foreign impurities. This market will grow at an average rate of 8% to reach $810 million by 2023, according to MRF.
Another striking example is the systemsremote control of equipment, which are indispensable in industries that are potentially hazardous to humans. Operators and controllers issue commands to devices remotely, minimizing the risk of work-related injuries. For example, last year Promtekhvzryv began carrying out industrial explosions using electronic detonators, the main benefit of which is the absence of deceleration errors during initiation. The company also partially automated the work of the emulsion explosives workshop, giving control over pumps, mixers, heating elements and fans to the controller. And at the Kirovsky mine of Apatit JSC, remote drilling of deep wells is used: the installation is controlled from the operator’s console. Such solutions make it possible to partially eliminate human work inside the mine.
Among the stopping factors of technological renewalindustry - commitment to familiar, more understandable solutions and reluctance to invest in projects with a long payback. Industries also suffer greatly from a lack of expertise and analytics. A study by TAdviser and Naumen showed: 75% of large industrial structures are faced with the fact that employees cannot find the necessary data to make any decisions - there is simply no systematization of information at enterprises, there is no integration between different systems, and the share of paper document flow is still high. As a result, deadlines for solving work problems are delayed, operating costs are rising, revenue is falling, R&D processes, the launch of new products and the introduction of innovations are slowing down. That is why transformation begins not with any one technology, but with the introduction of a unified information space for enterprise management.
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