MMK Crowns Winners of its ‘Digital Olympus’ Corporate Awards
Magnitogorsk Iron and Steel Works (MMK) highlighted its progress in digital development during 2022 at the second 'MMK on the Road to Digitalisation' conference and awarded the best projects and key contributors to the Company’s Digitalisation Strategy.
Since 2020, the Company has successfully implemented a strategic initiative to integrate innovative solutions and modern technology across its operations. To date, MMK has implemented 70 digital projects across various corporate branches, with another 197 initiatives currently in development. According to MMK CEO Pavel Shilyaev, this digitalisation drive aims to increase the efficiency and productivity of both the employees and the Company as a whole through the introduction of unique products and solutions.
"Digitalisation is a tool for developing and improving our technological, production and business processes. New digital solutions create new opportunities for us to improve the quality of decision-making at all levels of the Company's management," said Pavel Shilyaev, speaking at the conference.
MMK's Digitalisation Strategy has already delivered productivity benefits and improved the quality of its products. Information technology relieves professionals of routine tasks and increases their efficiency, in addition to ensuring employee safety and improving working conditions. It also enables the modelling and forecasting of technological and business processes, just-in-time production planning and efficient management of order fulfilment. This year, for example, the Company’s OTIF (on time in full) indicator, which reflects the timeliness and completeness of MMK’s deliveries, reached 85%. This was the highest level recorded among Russian steelmakers and was achieved thanks to MMK’s automated production scheduling system.
In 2022, MMK completed a large-scale project to replicate a unified corporate information system (CIS) across 15 MMK Group companies. The system covers production, sales, projects, personnel and maintenance management, as well as optimisation planning, accounting, finance and budgeting, electronic document management, procurement and purchasing. The unified CIS has become the foundation for MMK Group’s stable operation and development.
Digital technology has also brought a new approach to health, safety and the environment at MMK. In 2022, an automated safety system to prevent workers from operating in hazardous areas was launched at two of MMK's coke oven batteries. The Company also commissioned an automated intelligent foam fire-extinguishing system – the first of its kind in domestic metallurgy – at one of its hot-rolling mills, which enables fires to be contained quickly without interrupting the production process or sealing the area.
Last year, IT specialists carried out projects to stabilise the Company's information systems, protect against cyberthreats, and source alternative imports after certain foreign hardware and software manufacturers left the Russian market.
“Despite facing new challenges and tasks, we continued to implement digital projects to ensure that our IT component will continue to actively support the sustainable operation of MMK. In parallel, we established the Digital Olympus corporate awards to recognise individual employees and teams for their contributions to MMK's Digitalisation Strategy," said Vadim Feoktistov, Chief IT Specialist at MMK.
The award aims to recognise the ideas and initiatives that advance MMK's digital strategy, identify the best IT projects and foster digital transformation leaders among the Company's employees. The expert panel reviewed a total of 56 ideas submitted by Company employees, as well as 20 initiatives that have successfully passed digital committee review and 38 projects that were already implemented this year. The panel selected the key contributors to MMK’s Digitalisation Strategy in various categories, as well as the best digital idea, initiative and project of 2022.
The conference included an awards ceremony for the winners of the first Digital Olympus corporate awards. The Digital Idea of the Year award went to Vitaly Beginiuk, the leading specialist at MMK’s blast furnace shop, for his proposal to create a slag bowl monitoring system in the blast furnace shop. The Digital Initiative of the Year award recognised Nikolai Gladkikh, whose proposal on the creation of a dynamic technological risk management system was approved by the Company’s digital committee and has already been successfully implemented in several shops at the plant. MMK along with MMK-Informservice and Ausferr Research Technology Centre are working together on the development of this initiative.
For Digital Project of the Year, the panel selected a project to implement a trim optimisation system at hot rolling mill 2000 in MMK’s sheet rolling shop No. 10. The award was presented to the project leader and head of sheet rolling shop No. 10, Evgeny Shurandin. As part of the project, specialists installed a stereoscopic-width gauge with a laser strip speed metre and a scanning metal detector at the mill. The new system has reduced metal consumption per rolled product, improved the accuracy of the end-of-roll cut and reduced the number of emergency stops at the mill. The project, which is expected to bring an economic benefit of RUB 35 million per year, was implemented by MMK-Informservice in partnership with United Service Company LLC and Nosov Magnitogorsk State Technical University (NMSTU).
The winners of the six individual categories at the Digital Olympus awards included:
Captain of the Digital Future: Andrey Eremin, Economic Director at MMK
Highflyer: Oksana Samoilova, Director of MMK-Accounting Centre
Change Leader: Maxim Zlov, Deputy Chief Metallurgist and Digital Leader for Metallurgy
Man of Steel: Vladimir Banshchikov, Head of Sheet Metal Shop No. 10
Digitalisation Guru: Anton Ulyanov, Leading Project Office Specialist at MMK-Informservice
Valuable Contribution: Svetlana Bakhareva, Leading Specialist at MMK’s Economics Department
Nosov MSTU, a long-standing research partner of MMK, also received an award for its active participation and successful cooperation in the implementation of MMK's digitalisation strategy.