Digitalization in Rusagro

2023

Rusagro CEO Artem Petrov told how the company is being digitalized

At the end of December 2023, Artem Petrov, General Director of Rusagro Tech, spoke about how digitalization is taking place at Rusagro, the largest Russian agricultural holding.

According to Petrov, by the end of 2023, the group has more than 10 complex digital solutions in the direction of crop production. They are involved in value creation at every stage of the life cycle, from planning, supply, preparation and processing of fields to harvesting, transportation, storage and sales.

By the end of 2023, the Rusagro group has more than 10 complex digital solutions in the field of crop production

Among the IT projects implemented at Rusagro is the Strategic Algorithm. It helps determine which crops and where to grow. The algorithm analyzes more than a million possible scenarios for each field and forms an optimal crop rotation with a horizon of up to 10 years, Petrov said.

He also reported on the work of the Metaalgorithm neural network, which uses information about the available equipment and its location, current meteorological data, as well as data on field cultivation technologies. On their basis, the model builds a work plan based on the value priority of a particular operation for the harvest - determines which field to send a particular technique, where to conduct certain agricultural operations in order to get the maximum harvest and profit.

The next digital product introduced in Rusagro is Optimal Track. This software builds an optimal track model for each field, and Russian-made navigation equipment provides navigation accuracy when moving agricultural machinery up to 2 cm.

In general, we at Rusagro have learned very well to cope with the transformation and optimization of established processes using new digital tools, including neural networks, models, robotization, computer vision, and algorithms. This made it possible to achieve significant effects, especially in the field of production processes, and we will definitely continue this, - said the general director of Rusagro Tech[1] agricultural industry[2]

Rusagro demolishes American Cropwise and introduces Russian IT solution for 670 million rubles

Rusagro is introducing a domestic IT system by agricultural production instead of the American platform Cropwise and will spend 670 million rubles on this. The largest agricultural holding in Russia announced this on October 13, 2023. Read more here.

2022

AI, UAV and human factor reduction. What key technologies Rusagro introduced in 2022

Rusagro, the largest vertical agricultural holding in Russia, summed up the results of the digital transformation for 2022 in its annual report. It presents the key projects of Rusagro in the field of technology implementation in various business areas in 2022.

To successfully implement the stages of the digital transformation strategy in 2022, the IT services of all Rusagro business areas were centralized in Rusagro-Technologies, which was created in 2021.

According to the database of legal entities Kontur.Fokus, "in 2022 the revenue of this company amounted to 779.8 million rubles, and net profit - 153.8 million rubles.

Also, in order to support the company's tasks, a mathematical modeling service was created to work with artificial intelligence and machine learning technologies. At the end of 2022, 10 people worked in her team and there were 10 projects in development.

In 2022, Rusagro continued to develop the Digital Farmer computer and mobile application to automate work with raw material suppliers, launched in 2021. At the end of 2022, the information system had more than 1.5 thousand agricultural producers in three regions of the presence of the fat and fat business. Over the past year, a team of employees of the procurement department using the Digital Farmer tool has purchased oilseeds worth more than 20 billion rubles.

And in the meat business "Rusagro," in particular, robotization technologies continue to develop. A project is underway to robotize packaging processes, designed for a period until 2024. As a result of this project, the company expects to reduce personnel costs.

In addition, in 2023, the construction of the last pig complex should be completed in the Primorsky Territory, and a robotic warehouse of finished products should be launched at a meat processing plant.

Rusagro revealed a critical dependence on imported IT: "We hope that we will not be disconnected from MES"

Maxim Basov, chairman of the board of directors of Rusagro, Russia's largest vertical agricultural holding, said at an industry session at the SPIEF in St. Petersburg on June 16 that it is not yet possible to replace some of the imported IT solutions used in the company.

For example, the company depends on MES systems for meat processing - there is a critical dependence on European companies. In one of its annual reports, Rusagro previously mentioned that meat processing uses two systems - SFK and Innova^[3].

This is a critical point. So far, we don't know what to do about it if something happens, "says Basov. "We don't yet understand how to approach it. We hope that everything will be fine, but here you have to create something. For now, we hope that we will not be turned off.

The industry for which you need your MES is very specific, and it makes no sense to create such a system for Russian meat processing plants, because it will not pay off. But some decisions, most likely, will gradually arise, believes the chairman of the board of directors of Rusagro.

At the Tambov Bacon plant, which is part of the Rusagro Group of Companies "(photo - Ministry of Agriculture of the Russian Federation)"

The company also has the largest and most comprehensive SAP installation in the world in the field of crop production. And in the current situation, no matter how difficult it is for the company, it will have to switch to Russian solutions. The nuance is that today there is no such Russian solution, but it can probably be created on the basis of 1C, although a lot of work will have to be done, says the top manager of Rusagro.

The company had big plans for robotization, and they all relied on interaction with world leaders - American, European and Chinese companies. There are no such solutions in Russia. And now this work at Rusagro has completely stood up.

Rusagro also used foreign drones, mostly Chinese, and now cannot: "We now cannot work with Chinese companies, as with European ones, in terms of access to their software product." Therefore, there is a great need to create your own drone and drone control system, said the chairman of the board of directors of Rusagro. With this initiative, the company plans to enter the Ministry of Digital Development.

In addition to creating drones, Rusagro also wants to offer the Ministry of Digital Development to create its own navigation systems, such as the American Trimble. This is a system that is attached to almost any car in the field and allows you to drive on tracks, make decisions, etc.

This project is probably worth several billion rubles. And we ourselves, as a company, are not sure that we will go on this, but if we know that there will be some kind of subsidy, then we would probably be ready to take it on, "says Maxim Basov.

AI solutions for unmanned vehicles, including for agricultural use, from the Russian company Cognitive Pilot are not too suitable to replace Trimble, Rusagro believes.

These solutions are aimed at optical recognition. And we believe that at the moment it is not very effective. It is much more efficient just a system that automatically detects a track on the field for different cultures and different techniques and drives a car along this track. We do not need recognition for this, it is enough for it to automatically travel on tracks, - explained Maxim Basov.

Western IT solutions in Rusagro account for less than 50%, according to the company's top manager. First of all, high-level solutions, such as AI, BI, automatic decision-making, etc., are used by Russian ones, created, among other things, by Rusagro's own resources. At the same time, unlike some other large companies, Rusagro does not have many developers - only about 100. Plus, the company cooperates with partners.

2021: Rusagro created RusagroTech for software development

On August 9, 2021, it became known about the creation by the Rusagro group of a subsidiary that will be engaged in software development. We are talking about the Rusagro Tech company, the data on which are posted in the SPARK-Interfax system. Read more here.

2020

Digital Transformation Strategy

In order to implement automation systems and develop innovative solutions to optimize production processes in each business area, Rusagro approved a digital transformation strategy, which is an integral part of the overall development strategy for each business. The single goal of the digital transformation strategy for all businesses of the company is to increase profits by reducing costs and increasing productivity, including by reducing the impact of the human factor.

Brief on digital development strategies for each of Rusagro's business areas (data from the holding's annual report for 2020)

Automation helped Rusagro reduce staff by 15% in the largest business area

In 2020, the average headcount of Rusagro decreased by 1.6% compared to the previous year - to 19.3 thousand people (− 314 people), according to the annual report of Rusagro. And the bulk of the cuts came from the fat and fat business, where in 2020 the number of employees decreased by 15% (− 840 people). In the case of the latter, the number of personnel decreased as a result of automation, complication of positions and the transfer of low-skilled positions to outsourcing, Rusagro explains in the report.

Photo: i-invdn-com.akamaized.net

The company could not comment on TAdviser at the time of publication of the material, due to which employees were mainly reduced. It is known from the report that the majority of Rusagro employees (71%) belong to the category of "workers."

The fat and fat direction with revenue of 76.2 billion rubles is the largest in terms of turnover in the Rusagro business at the end of the year.

In 2020, a digital transformation strategy until 2026 was approved in this business direction. And within it, a global task was identified: "To increase the company's profit by reducing costs and increasing productivity using digital tools."

For this, a microservice architecture was chosen, which allows you to use the most suitable information systems for business requirements. The main emphasis is placed on information decision-making systems using mathematical modeling and optimization technologies, neural networks, machine learning, as well as data analysis systems - BigData, DWH, Power BI.

In 2020, in particular, the project "Accounting and tax reporting - the creation of a joint service center" was fully implemented in the oil and oil complex, and the projects "Routing Management" and "Maintenance and Repair Management" are at the stage of replication at production sites.

Application of Big Data and AI technologies in Rusagro

On June 9, 2020, at the TAdviser "Big Data and BI Day" online conference, Tanya Milek, manager for methodology and unification of the Russian agricultural holding Rusagro GK, spoke about three projects - "non-invasive," i.e. remote or contactless assessment of animal weight, on robotization of processes and the introduction of unmanned control systems for agricultural machinery. Unmanned control of equipment, in particular, Tanya Milek named among the main trends in robotization in agriculture. Read more here.

IT digitalization projects at Rusagro

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