Lift sharing service for Kazan residents conceived in Naberezhnye Chelny

Digitalisation should be in the minds

The priority topic of the meeting of the Council of the Association for the Promotion of Digital Development was the transition of Tatarstan companies to digitalisation. As the chairman of the council, Rifkat Minnikhanov, noted, digital transformation is becoming an integral part of strategic development — steps in this direction are being taken at the state level and by companies.

But digitalisation is not just a cross-cutting technology. It is impossible to achieve success without trained personnel, Rifkat Minnikhanov is sure. According to him, today the discussion should be broader than just digitalisation.

“The scientific activity of universities, the creation of advanced engineering schools, technological entrepreneurship, the creation of scientific campuses are also coming to the fore," he noted.

In this part, businesses can act as industrial partners. In the near future, it is planned to open engineering schools in Almetyevsk and Naberezhnye Chelny at the Kazan Federal Univesity.

“If today industrial partners do not go to universities and do not take guardianship of our institutions, specialised schools, we will surely lose. This will become the main core of work in technological development," Rifkat Minnikhanov explained.

However, the agenda of the meeting included only the aspect of transformation in production, and integrated approach will be discussed later, he said.

Digital twins of deposits

Tatarstan oil companies primarily need digitalisation to increase efficiency and competitiveness, Vitaly Gataullin, the deputy director general of Tatneft for digital development, noted in his report.

The company has 164 deposits, more than 1 million pieces of equipment. The group includes 132 enterprises, 65 thousand employees. “All these objects generate a huge amount of data that needs to be collected and processed. This is a difficult task that cannot be solved without modelling a data management system. Therefore, all companies are gradually moving to digital platforms," he said. A promising direction, according to him, is the automatic interpretation of data on the state of objects.

Zoya Loscheva, the head of the company's Modelling Centre, spoke more specifically about the digitalisation of oil production. According to her, digital twins of deposits and solutions that take into account the complex integration of production processes are being actively implemented.

“In 2019, digital twins were created in the form of hydrodynamic models for oil assets, which provide 80% of oil production. By the end of the year, integrated field models will be ready for the Almetyevskoye, Abrakhmanovskoye sites, as well as for Romashkino and Novo-Yelkhovskoye fields. The integrated model contains a hydrodynamic scheme and a model for maintaining reservoir pressure with all pipelines and wells. They will help to identify “weak” networks and pumps," the speaker explained.

Taxi at regulated rates from the automobile plant

The main topic of the speeches of the top management of the Naberezhnye Chelny auto giant was “flexible production”, when there is an opportunity to assemble 60 modifications with 1,500 different options on the production line. Already now, 2-3 models are assembled on one branch, and workers read tasks on tablets. This makes it possible to quickly respond to changes in production. Director of KAMAZ Digital Platform PLC Eldar Shavaliev told how, thanks to the introduction of digital technologies, the automobile plant was able to adapt to changing orders. According to him, digitalisation was carried out in partnership with Rosatom State Corporation, which, with the support of the Information Technology Development Fund, spent over 440 million rubles on only one module — discrete production.

Shavaliev appealed to Tatarstan President Rustam Minnikhanov with the request to support the pilot project to launch the new lift sharing service for Kazan residents. The first such service was launched in Moscow last autumn. The possible opening date in Kazan is the beginning of 2023.

The main difference between the service and the services of taxi aggregators is that transportation could be carried out as regular, which means that trips will be carried out at regulated tariffs, and not commercial prices.

“Imagine, you leave work at 10 pm, and a regular bus, most likely, is no longer running," Eldar Shavaliyev told reporters. “You call a taxi, and most likely, it will be expensive. We offer another option — a bus that will not go around 'empty' stops, but will go the shortest way to your destination, and may take a few more late passengers along the way. It is enough to specify the location in the mobile application, and the bus route will be built based on these coordinates.”

A similar service is already operating in Troitsk and Podolsk near Moscow. KAMAZ Digital Platform intends to act as the integrator of the technical solution. “In the work of the service, if there is an application for it, technological solutions of partners and their own developments will be used," the speaker said.

The launch of such service is planned to be discussed with the Kazan authorities in the near future. First of all, they are expected to make proposals on determining the area of use, bus fleet and the capacity of the bus itself.

“What the fleet will be — we want to discuss this issue with the city," he said. And not only. Unlike a taxi, which can be launched at any time, the opening of regular service requires careful study. For example, federal legislation requires the definition of the fixed route. Therefore, we need to understand on the basis of which route we will be able to work, and how to meet all requirements here," Shavaliyev explained.

If we talk not only about night transportation, then remote urban destinations could other places of application — among the most likely, the possibility of covering Salmachi, Derbyshki, Kadyshevo is under consideration. “But you need to take into account the economy, demand, flow," he clarified.

Why in Kazan, not in Naberezhnye Chelny

Interestingly, KAMAZ is not considering Naberezhnye Chelny for launching the pilot experiment. “Unlike Kazan, Naberezhnye Chelny is assembled in a different way," Shavaliev noted. “There are two main highways of motor transport in the city, which are 'closed' by public transport. In general, there are two peaks of traffic in the city, in the morning when residents go to the factory, and in the evening, when they return from work. And in Kazan, there is an inter-peak time with a good demand for transportation. Besides, Kazan is a night city.”

However, the president of Tatarstan refrained from commenting on this project in his speech at the meeting. Rustam Minnikhanov reminded that the year 2022 has been declared Year of Digitalisation It will be full of a number of events, in particular, a lot of work will be done with schoolchildren and students, digital literacy training will be organised for the population. At the same time, significant funds will be directed to the digitalisation of the social sphere (education, healthcare).

“I would like to note that some work in this direction is already underway, and significant reserves of digitalisation are in the industry," the president of the republic stressed.