The White House has decided on the directions for the innovative development of the manufacturing industry, having approved a strategy for the digital transformation of the industry until 2030. The outcome of its implementation should be a transition to automated flexible production – this will be facilitated by virtual testing of products and the transformation of the employment model in industry. The core of the changes is considered to be the expansion of support for domestic developments based on artificial intelligence, robotics, the Internet of things, and virtual and augmented reality technologies. Meanwhile, business is discussing amendments to the strategy and insisting on solving systemic problems – unifying industrial standards, training personnel for digitalization and regulating the legal aspects of the use of new technologies.
Prime Minister Mikhail Mishustin approved a strategy for digital transformation of the manufacturing industry until 2030 – it should ensure the fulfillment of the national goal of achieving “digital maturity” of key sectors of the economy set by the president. The strategy fixes a number of sectoral problems – low labor productivity, irrational use of resources, a high proportion of scrap, long-term launch of products on the market, high transaction costs and difficulties in the formation of cooperative chains – which can be removed by digital transformation.
“Countries that can digitize industry earlier than others will become technology leaders. We have all the possibilities for this, ”Mikhail Mishustin said yesterday at an operational meeting with his deputies.
The work will be carried out in four areas, packaged in the projects “Smart Manufacturing”, “Digital Engineering”, “Products of the Future” and “New Employment Model”. The Strategy Center is making up the Smart Manufacturing project – within its framework, an infrastructure will be formed to support the implementation of Russian software and hardware and software systems. According to Mikhail Mishustin, financial support for domestic projects in the field of industrial software will quadruple. “These are technologies of the Internet of Things, artificial intelligence, robotics and sensing, virtual and augmented reality,” the Prime Minister explained. In particular, we are talking about the introduction of domestic computer-aided design systems (CAD / CAE / CAM) and product lifecycle management (PDM / PLM); in parallel, it is proposed to introduce restrictions on foreign counterparts (bans and quotas in purchases). These measures should ensure the share of proprietary electronic components for digital transformation over 40% (recall, microelectronics is an area that the government has identified as an experimental field for vertical import substitution projects, their support includes “end-to-end projects” and an extensive list of protectionist measures).
The digital engineering project involves the creation of a national standardization and certification system based on virtual product testing technologies – this will require enterprises’ digital twin technologies and unification of data formats.
The goal is the transition to a flexible conveyor production model, that is, the creation of customized products for the specific requirements of the client, as well as from the concept of “repair according to the regulations” to “repair in condition”.
For this, within the framework of the “Products of the Future” project, the enterprises will introduce predictive analytics technologies. It is proposed to eliminate the shortage of qualified personnel by introducing a new employment model – we are talking about creating a competency exchange, which will increase the efficiency of using human capital in industry, as well as launching services that should level the lack of competencies. The Ministry of Industry and Trade, which developed it, should be responsible for the implementation of the strategy.
At the same time, the problems of digital transformation of industry were discussed yesterday at a forum in the Russian Union of Industrialists and Entrepreneurs, where representatives of large companies, together with the Ministry of Industry and Trade and Rosstandart, discussed possible amendments to the strategy. According to the Russian Union of Industrialists and Entrepreneurs, companies have already started digital transformation, but the introduction of technologies is hampered by the lack of a system of uniform standards and classifiers in the field of digital technologies. In addition, it is necessary to regulate the legal aspects of the use of automated systems and the use of robotics, as well as to provide training for digitalization, including specialists in cybersecurity of industrial production.
What else did they talk about in the RUIE
Digital transformation programs have already been developed in a third of large companies and operate in almost all “super-large” (more than 52 thousand employees), Deputy Co-Chairman of the RSPP Committee on Industrial Policy and Technical Regulation Andrey Lotsmanov said yesterday at the forum “Industrial Policy in the Implementation of the Digital Transformation of Industry Strategy” … The principles of digital production are most actively implemented by Russian enterprises from the metallurgical, aviation, automotive, shipbuilding industries, nuclear energy, food production, and the rocket and space complex. At the same time, a number of companies have already implemented projects envisaged by the government strategy to create digital twins, virtual design of production processes, and transition from full-cycle enterprises to a highly efficient distributed model.
However, the processes of digital transformation are hampered by unresolved systemic problems. In particular, we are talking about the absence of uniform standards and classifiers in the field of the digital economy. This “slows down the process of creating a single digital space for the interaction of enterprises and industries in the new machine-machine format,” says Alexander Shokhin, head of the Russian Union of Industrialists and Entrepreneurs. Following the results of the forum, its participants drew up a draft resolution, which included recommendations to the government. In particular, the Ministry of Industry and Trade is recommended to supplement the strategy for digital transformation of manufacturing industries with sections on the regulatory and technical support of the strategy, a program for the development of uniform standards (products, organizations, classifiers, dictionaries, technical reference books). At the same time, Rosstandart is recommended to take into account the proposals of the Russian Union of Industrialists and Entrepreneurs to develop a list of standards for creating a new system “Industry 4.0” as part of the national standardization program for 2022 and take this direction as a priority (we are talking about creating a system of machine-understandable documents for the interaction of enterprises and standards for such documents) … The officials attending the forum acknowledge the importance of standardization. At the same time, the head of Rosstandart, Anton Shalaev, noted that the government has already identified promising areas of standardization: for example, ten out of 217 such standards have already been approved, including those on artificial intelligence and digital twins. In addition, a project technical committee has been created that deals with the translation of standards into digital format – as a result, the so-called smart standards can be automatically read by information systems when analyzing production solutions. Director of the Department of Digital Technologies of the Ministry of Industry and Trade Vladimir Dozhdev also notes that the strategy takes into account the need to standardize digital technologies.
The Russian Union of Industrialists and Entrepreneurs is also worried about the problem with a shortage of qualified personnel in the field of digitalization, including cybersecurity specialists for industrial production. For a systematic solution to the problem, the authors of the recommendations ask the government to initiate the development of new educational programs, and the Ministry of Industry and Trade and the Ministry of Education and Science to ensure interaction between industry enterprises and educational organizations to improve the “practice-oriented training of personnel for digital transformation” using the mechanisms of network learning, dual education, targeted and corporate training. Note that the proposals of the Russian Union of Industrialists and Entrepreneurs will not soon be included in the strategy, since the document can be edited at intervals of a year – however, the relevance of the proposals may remain and will depend on the effectiveness of the strategy’s activities.
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