Magnitogorsk Iron & Steel Works : MMK invests RUB 2.9 billion in digital solutions over three years

Magnitogorsk Iron and Steel Works (MMK) has invested RUB 2.9 billion in digitalisation projects over the past three years and generated RUB 2.6 billion in savings (RUB 800 million in 2023), according to Andrey Eremin, MMK's Director for Economics, who spoke at the anniversary conference "RPA Connect: The Magic of Attraction."

The conference, which was held at MMK, was devoted to the practices of robotic process automation (RPA) and business digitalisation. As part of its digitalisation strategy, MMK has developed 105 digital initiatives, 72 of which have already been implemented.

According to Mr Eremin, MMK is carrying out a large-scale digitalisation effort and is using every new digital technology that appears on the market. "Any project that we launch within the Company should have a certain impact, which may be economic, environmental or related to occupational health and safety, along with efficiency gains in one department or another - procurement, accounting, legal. That is, we have found points where these technologies can be applied in every aspect of the Company's operations," Mr Eremin said.

MMK has seen the largest economic benefit (64%) from projects carried out at the Company's industrial sites - first and foremost, its sinter, coke and blast furnace facilities, where technologies such as machine vision and artificial intelligence are used in addition to mathematical models for optimisation processes. As an example, Mr Eremin mentioned MMK's Optimal Cast Iron system, which has enabled the Company to minimise the cost of producing cast iron - the stage of production that accounts for up to 80% of the costs of metallurgical production.

Robotic process automation is playing a major role when it comes to improving efficiency. Over the past three years, the incorporation of RPA systems has resulted in savings of about RUB 650 million - 26% of the overall savings from all of the Company's digital projects. Some 288 business processes have been automated throughout MMK Group, and this work continues. At the same time, the cumulative impact of RPA increases every year since, once the initial implementation costs are incurred, the Company then faces minimal costs to keep the system operating, noted Mr Eremin.

According to Director of MMK-Informservice Vadim Feoktistov, RPA is a key element of MMK's digitalisation strategy.

"We are introducing and developing RPA systems on an ongoing basis. New technologies are emerging that complement those systems. In particular, this means process mining technology for finding and analysing bottlenecks in business processes, as well as task mining, a technology for the in-depth analysis of employee performance data. These technologies enable us to study business processes, digitalise steps and, with the help of RPA systems, eliminate the involvement of human beings," said Mr Feoktistov.