Digital Upgrade for Continuous Production. ITPS Presented a New Approach to Assessing the Effectiveness of Industrial Projects

Two events of the strategic session “Digital Upgrade for Business. Perm Territory. Industry” organized by the autonomous non-commercial organization “Digital Economy” under the auspices of the Ministry of Industry and Trade  and the Ministry of Communications of the Perm territory, were held online in December 2020. The focus was on the most relevant topics of digitalization at industrial enterprises: integrated approach, quick wins and the tools required to support implementation. The topic was well-considered, as more than half of the major investment projects on digitalization that are currently being implemented in the territory (65 out of 90) are aimed specifically at transforming industrial enterprises.

The online meetings were attended by Vladimir Dozhdev, Director for the Digital Technologies Department at the Ministry of Industry and Trade of the Russian Federation, Igor Nikitin, Minister of Information Development and Communications of the Perm Territory, Elena Degtyareva, First Deputy Minister of Industry and Trade of the Perm Territory, and the representatives of the leading companies involved in production project, such as: 1S, ER-Telecom Holding, Oxtron Group of Companies, Tsifra Group of Companies, ITPS, Megafon, etc. The federal experts highly appreciated the level of digitalization of the Perm territory industry. “This is one of the most active regions where the digitalization of enterprises is systematic. Our task is to find such projects and offer them government support. We would like to use the assessment matrix, which has been created in the Perm Territory, with each company individually. For our part, we can also encourage companies that participate in such projects and offer them benefits,” said Vladimir Dozhdev.    

Participants of the session represented by IT companies shared their experience of the best projects implemented this year. Alexei Mezentsev, Digital Production Director at the ITPS Group of Companies, presented the results of the project on digital management model development for four dry-process cement production facilities. It is one of the major ITPS projects recently which was implemented from scratch. The facilities are located in different regions of Russia and are part of an international cement holding. As part of the project, a comprehensive MES-level solution was developed, built taking into account the industry specifics and aimed at flexible asset management from a single spot. The result is an increase in the quality and efficiency of management decisions, high adaptability and quick response to market changes, reduced losses due to lower number of accidents and emergency situations, and increased productivity. The project became the basis for further digital development of the holding, after which several major initiatives were launched aimed at the full implementation of the Digital Plant concept.  

“The Russian industrial sector demonstrates more and more examples of successful digitalization. The enterprises have learned to avoid common mistakes; nowadays people start projects having a clear strategy, measurable goals and an idea of ​​how digital tools will affect the existing processes. It has become easier to see the connection between actual production happening “here and now” and long-term business goals. However, the market still lacks clear criteria for the project effectiveness assessment, which makes it difficult to go on. These criteria should be defined in advance, before the solution development, identifying the bottlenecks in technological process and calculating the economic benefit. This approach allows not only to better represent the expected results, but also makes it possible to plan several moves ahead, to see the new opportunities when switching to a new management model based on real-time data analytics,” said Alexei Mezentsev. 

The autonomous non-commercial organization “Digital Economy” together with the Ministry of Industry and Trade and the Ministry of Information Development of the Perm Territory plans to hold the third day of the strategic session in the offline format in the first half of 2021.