MMK Shares Its Robotic Technology Experience and Impact Assessing Methodology
Magnitogorsk Iron and Steel Works’s (MMK) executives and specialists took part in the fourth “RPA Connect” conference, which was dedicated to the use of robotic process automation (RPA) technology and its benefits. They shared their practical experience and economic impact from the implementation of RPA.
MMK began to develop and implement RPA technologies in 2018, with Next Robotics Technology Centre being the main solutions provider. Over the past five years, Next’s specialists have carried out major projects across all of MMK’s main functions and business streams, including economics and finance, taxation, procurement, logistics, accounting and others.
“Robotic process automation is an essential part of MMK’s digitalisation strategy. We have accumulated a wealth of experience in this area, which can be seen in the large number of projects that we have successfully completed. More than 250 software robots have relieved our staff of various routine and often repetitive tasks, and improved the Company’s business processes”, said Vadim Feoktistov, MMK’s Chief IT Specialist.
According to Andrey Yeremin, MMK’s Director for Economics, the integration of RPA solutions has improved the quality of management and generated significant savings for the Company, which have amounted to RUB 377 million since 2018. This figure was determined using the first in Russia methodology for making such calculations, which was developed by the Next Robotics Technology Centre in conjunction with specialists from MMK and experts from the company Business Solutions and Technologies. The methodology is based on a matrix of the impact of RPA solutions and involves about a dozen parameters.
“Our methodology can be applied in any sector, regardless of the RPA platform that a given company is using. It can be used to calculate efficiency in a variety of functional areas, and the approach that we have developed uses the least time-consuming methods possible”, Andrey Yeremin said. For example, the economic benefit calculated using this methodology in MMK’s key areas of operations is about 30% higher compared with conventional assessments.
“We collected all our experience and developed a methodology that makes it possible to take into account and to calculate all the economic benefits of using robotic process automation – qualitative, quantitative and potential. It reduces the likelihood of overlooking important information and makes it possible to get the most out of a particular solution”, added Mikhail Verisov, Director of the Next Robotics Technology Centre.
As one of the Company’s next steps, MMK executives and specialists are considering the development of RPA solutions with process mining and task mining technologies, as well as applying the methodology to calculate the benefits of RPA as a standard for MMK Group as a whole.