Information Technology at Sollers

2023: Didn't buy into "best practices." The IT landscape on 1C allowed Sollers to painlessly survive the departure of foreign partners

Sollers has worked with various brands of automakers over the years, including Ford, while from the very beginning - since 2005 - used 1C as the main platform, and created its independent target IT landscape. And all her work with partners was built on the 1C platform. Therefore, in 2022, unlike some other large Russian automakers, Sollers, with the departure of foreign IT vendors, did not have to urgently migrate from imported systems, for example, from SAP, to Russian ones, with the exception of engineering software.

Maxim Zhadko, Deputy Director for IT Sollers, spoke about what the IT landscape of the company looks like now at the demodna of the industrial competence center (IC) "Automotive" in September 2023.

From the presentation Maxim Zhadko at the demodn of ICK "Automotive"

Each global manufacturer came with its own global systems. But we have always been able to single out our independent part and make integration with a global partner. As a result, on the one hand, we have seen well what practices global partners use. For example, we knew what best practices Ford, Fiat, Mazda had and, when we saw something new and right, we took it for ourselves. That is, this is not the case when we wrote something ourselves from the very beginning, decided that it was good, and lived with it for 15 years. No. All the partners listed here have enriched our system. As a result, our production and logistics systems have incorporated all this experience, "says Maxim Zhadko.

As a result, when global partners left, Sollers had no difficulty switching to its systems. The company did this almost the next day, supported the service and warranty obligations.

In the Sollers IT landscape, typical configurations are used almost everywhere, and where they cannot be used, a microservice approach was used: when some functionality is taken, which is lacking in the typical configuration, microservice is made and integration with it. There are a lot of them, and in different situations for different brands they can be assembled like Lego cubes.

In terms of system ON import substitution, it also began some time ago, Sollers uses the OS Astra Linux and. DBMS PostgreSQL

The difficult moment that remained, Maxim Zhadko calls engineering systems. All the brands with which the company worked used. Siemens Teamcenter He was chosen to replace him, and with T-Flex the new products created by Sollers, they are already working in this solution. Now there is a question of transferring old models that were already in the company from Teamcenter to T-Flex.

According to Maxim Zhadko, already at the end of cooperation with Ford, the WMS and MES systems that Sollers had liked the American automaker with their versatility: they were made on the basis of different variations and, unlike a global partner, Sollers had the opportunity to quickly change the system. And as a pilot, Ford agreed to launch Sollers production systems at a factory in South Africa.

Passport of Sollers digitalization projects

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