Interview with TAdviser: Yuri Prokhorov, United Shipbuilding Corporation - on digitalization under defense restrictions

Yuri Prokhorov: Today, USC is about 80% of the shipbuilding market of the Russian Federation and, more than 100 thousand employees, we crossed this line recently, about 50 legal entities and turnover at the level of hundreds of billions of rubles. An important feature - the main part of our products is the state defense order. We build both civilian vessels and warships. If you evaluate the digital maturity of the company, then you need to understand that shipbuilding is not in the top five in terms of maturity. Another important point is that the methods of building ships themselves are a kind of symbiosis of construction, both industry and engineering. This poses quite complex product data management issues.

Plus, the state defense order determines specific features. So, inside the company implemented several independent circuits for working with data. Accordingly, our task is to make different solutions for each of these circuits and then work in them. At the same time, often issues of digitalization and safety of closed circuits contradict each other.

Yuri Prokhorov: Yes, these are such ponds. Moreover, the more secret, the deeper. We have everything adult in terms of sanctions. And everything is adult from the point of view of the Ministry of Digital Development, that is, from the point of view of import substitution. These circumstances impose quite heavy demands on us, in terms of how we will develop.

Yuri Prokhorov: If we consider several strategic levels: business strategy, IT strategy, etc., then we consider digital transformation as something intermediate between IT strategy and business strategy. Recently, ministry directives were issued that regulate how to develop a digital transformation strategy, and we entered the first pool of companies that should do this.

Among the main priorities that are put there are economic efficiency. And it is often difficult to describe. Therefore, we have started the process of creating a digital transformation strategy, agreed on the main provisions, and now we are starting to discuss how we will do this.

Yuri Prokhorov: We have identified four key objects of digital transformation: the product life cycle - we must transform it; the technologies we use; our production assets with which we build ships; human capital.

Yuri Prokhorov: In order to talk about digital platforms, you first need to answer the question of what we want to do. This looks like this for us. Now we are using, let's say, a document-centric way of organizing business processes, that is, when everything is document-oriented. And we want to move to network-centric and model-centric ways of conducting business processes.

What are we talking about? We must cross the barrier of the legal boundaries of our societies, make certain centers of competence that will implement certain business processes. This is the first important moment.

The second is that we have to design the models. But not in the classic form that people are used to, that is, 3D models, but models as a kind of description of product and production, that is, means of production, etc.

Our task is mainly to find a balance between the requirements for the product, our ability to manufacture it and the cost at which we will do it. Since the development and production cycle often takes decades, it is important for us to be able to connect and synthesize all the necessary parameters of future projects in the early stages.

This is the basic idea, which is then divided into all four types of digital transformation objects into all objects. And from the point of view of the platforms, we are talking about the next. We have physical entities in the form of, firstly, a designed ship, people or factories, and, secondly, some information about the operation of ships during operation.

Once again, I remind you that the operation cycle can be 40-50 years. So here. We form models that describe these physical objects, and based on these models, we have five key IT platforms - interaction platforms.

We mean interaction with both our external consumers and internal consumers, that is, internal departments. Let me list these platforms:

• Digital design platform.
• Digital platform of construction, production.
• Digital platform for operation. This is a new interesting area where new areas of artificial intelligence, big data processing, etc. are emerging for us.
• Digital assets. We want to manage the lifecycle of our production assets, understand when and what to do with them. This is much more than the planned preventive repair system, which is valid for May 2021.
• Digital Corporation is a platform that manages all these four areas.

Yuri Prokhorov: If we talk about the organizational part, then, by and large, digital transformation is the implementation of the project portfolio. Such a portfolio of projects, which, in turn, consist of projects to change business processes. Plus IT tools that support them.

Accordingly, each of these projects should have a classic history related to its description, planning, risk management, etc. We want to create an institution when business users will be responsible for each digital transformation project. Because we believe that this is enough: not the IT service and not the center of competence for digital transformation, but the functional managers who are responsible for this area.

This position is supported by the CEO, and in a rather rigid form indicates that we will move in this direction.

Yuri Prokhorov: If we are considering IT tools and we are not talking about the import substitution of the ship's equipment itself, then the situation is as follows. From the point of view of the entire product life cycle, at the initial stages we have CAD, that is, an automated design system. We have a huge problem in the Russian Federation - there is no domestic software of exactly the heavy class necessary for the design of complex facilities. As of May 2021, quite serious efforts are being made by, for example, Rosatom to recreate such a system.

But the tragedy of the situation is that while our colleagues are engaged in this, software the pace that Western companies have gained allows them to move a little faster. If we use, let's say, trophy, software it will not be able to work in jobs under. OS Linux This is a key story.

In matters related to accounting ERP systems, we are moving, by and large, in two directions. Firstly, there is a St. Petersburg company, a supplier of a solution that Global-Marine is engaged in the development of ERP and production preparation systems specifically for shipbuilding. There we already have part of the implementations.

The second story is related to 1C: we are trying with this company to develop some typical solution for shipbuilding. As of May 2021, the process is very slow, unfortunately.

Yuri Prokhorov: No, I would not say about stakeholders... In fact, the key feature is the state defense order. What does that mean for us? The design of military equipment is strictly in accordance with GOST, and the current versions of regulatory documentation do not mean trivial work with mathematical models when accepting, for example, samples. You still have to prepare a large number of documents, drawings, etc., which, of course, does not speed up the process.

But I will note a very important trend that is underway - colleagues from the relevant department are conducting pilot projects to change this situation.

Yuri Prokhorov: Of course, we are for any boil, except for the hunger strike... But again I repeat: the product cycle is very long. And it starts if we talk about military developments, with contracts. Everything is prescribed in detail there, and it is impossible to change it. Therefore, we are trying to lay down changes in all the basic provisions that we have, so that future projects we have in new realities.

But there is another feature - inherited data. And then we again return to the idea of ​ ​ import substitution. Legacy data resides in archived systems, and the cost of transferring it to new systems, let's say, is very significant. Someone has to pay for it. Question: Who? And why? And here is a fairly large number of those very stakeholders with different interests.

But if you look at a certain trend unfolding into the future, I believe that the movement forward is quite tangible: we understand where we are moving, understand how we are moving, and further the question is to coordinate the portfolio of projects with all key ministries and launch them. It was simply transformed according to all the rules of project activity.