IT-Enterprise as general partner of Industrial Digitalization Fest
On December 4, 2018, discussions on the possibility of integrating IT solutions available on the market into business problems took place at the Kiev Depot Conference Hall. The experts in the evaluation of the decisions were the heavy industry enterprises and agricultural holdings of Ukraine: Agrositi-Invest, Astarta-Kiev, Ukrainian Milling Company, Gorodnyansky Agrarian Investments, Metinvest-PromService, Azovstal Metallurgical Combine, Donbassenergo, Stan-Komplekt, etc.
How does it work?
- Representatives of the largest agro-holdings, metallurgy, engineering and energy described the production issues for which there were no optimal solutions yet.
- Teams of technologists and engineers offered solutions as business proposals.
- The most effective and interesting solutions were selected by the advisory council of top managers of innovative companies: IT-Enterprise, Re:Actor, In:Agro, KMZ Industries, Grain Capital, and Smartfarming.
Production requests
Today corporations in the real sector of the economy are looking for solutions to automate production processes aimed at effective operational management, streamlining business processes, minimizing the influence of the "human factor" and reducing corruption risks.
Agrarian industry
For grain production, the following problems remain unsolved:
- integration of all elevator control systems
- automation of grain sampling from grain carriers and codification of samples
- automation of results accounting laboratory analyzes of batches of grain
- measurement of the content of combustion products in the elevator dryer
- automation of waste weighing in storage tanks
- automation of accounting the movement of grain storage places
- improving elevator thermometry in various storage areas
- automation of access control and weighing systems
For grain companies, it is important to eliminate manual work in the measurement of physico-chemical quality indicators. Despite the trend of digitalization, many enterprises continue to take measurements by eye. The systems for recording the quality and quantity of grain are important, from reception to the laboratory and along the path of its subsequent follow-up, depending on the physico-chemical indicators of the quality of the raw materials. The boundaries of Industry 3.0 and Industry 4.0 were defined as minimizing the influence of the human factor and applying IIoT technologies throughout the whole grain flow chain. Operational management issues using mobile data transfer technologies were actualized. One raised the issue of the absence of Ukrainian analogs of measuring instruments.
"The sensors for fixing the filling level of the silo without the cost of a human resource are not available among Ukrainian developers. The foreign analog is worth about $ 1.5 million. Enterprises want to get a Ukrainian product at a lower price," – one of the representatives of the agricultural holding said about the business needs.
In the framework of the grain session, Pavel Timofeev, implementation project manager in the AGRO sector, presented the IT-Enterprise solution for the Elevator. The solution closed the full cycle of the need for the accounting of the grain flow and included a library of calculation methods for assessing the quality of grain. The IT Enterprise platform allowed integrating into any modern equipment with built-in data transfer systems. In addition, IT-Enterprise experts were ready to develop systems for measuring and integrating with equipment. Due to the timing of its release, it was not equipped with digital data transmission channels yet. "Our solution allows integrating with any type of equipment at inspection points, in laboratories, and in silo towers," – Pavel Timofeev confirmed.
Heavy industry
Today especially important elements for metallurgy and engineering are:
- automation of the process of interaction between managers and production
- automation of equipment and installation of controllers on it
- pipe break control automation
- control of the vibration state of the blower mechanisms and turbo feed pumps
- monitoring the status of pumps and pump parts
There were also requests for technologies to prevent accidents and continuous monitoring, monitoring equipment sensors and temperature monitoring, online monitoring of operating activities with the ability to broadcast to a mobile device and automate measurements of important equipment parameters for accurate data collection and maximum exclusion of human factors at all stages of production chains.
Ready cases
Most of these requests have already been implemented in the IT-Enterprise.SmartEAM system. Plants using this system have reduced the cost of maintenance and repair of production process nodes and increased production parameters at no additional cost.
Kirill Kostanetsky, SmartEAM team leader, presented the latest Industry 4.0 practices – cases in the organization of reliable equipment operation. It was about the management of equipment maintenance: Predictive Maintenance (AI for predicting accidents) and virtual and augmented reality AR/VR (optimization of equipment maintenance with Google Glass).
The representative of Metinvest-PromService appreciated the obvious advantages of IT-Enterprise.SmartEAM and indicated that the working system confirmed by the results of implementation on the major industrial giants of Ukraine actually left far behind the competitors of the global market in the matter of managing repairs of fixed production assets.
"IT-Enterprise cases are standing head and shoulders above others. They are vivid, clear, convincing. Every time I am pleased to learn new facts about the recoupment of these investments in marketing," – Alexander Yurchak, General Director of AIAEU, confirmed the position of Metinvest.
Results
At the XXV IT-Enterprise Business Forum "Industry 4.0 – The Future is Now", Oleg Scherbatenko, director of IT-Enterprise, emphasized that IT-Enterprise became Digital Core Industry 4.0 – a system ready to combine and integrate innovations into a single mechanism.
Industrial Digitalization Fest collected the work tasks of enterprises and solutions offered by the market. The search for universal solutions and "road maps" not for one, but for several companies was one of the strategic objectives of the event. The exchange of experience, mistakes, ideas between companies throughout the industry and competitors was an important component of such a search.
Industrial Digitalization Fest has shown business readiness for significant digital changes. The border of competitiveness is increasing every day and requires more acceleration and optimization. In addition, business is ready for transparency and cooperation with software companies to create the necessary effective system. It can be argued that the market has realized the need to create an ecosystem of Industry 4.0, in which the customers know what they want, and development companies can provide it.
In a recent interview at the Kiev International Economic Forum KIEF-2018, Oleg Scherbatenko said: "The Ukrainian market requires joint participation of companies. (...) This will allow us to create an ideal image of customers who know what they need to manage their enterprises. Then, everyone will win." It looks like this business dream has become real.