Has the pandemic affected the need for digitalization of business processes? The demand for which solutions has increased markedly?

The constraints of economic and social life have shown that the future work of enterprises will also be determined by the ability to perform tasks remotely and in digital format.

The demand for digital services and products in general has grown, with the priority being the economic effect. Taking into account the instability of markets and financial systems, project implementation times are significantly reduced. This increases the need for complete turnkey solutions. Customers want to use ready-made tools with proven efficiency, carefully look at the existing cases and industry experience, and work out more and more complex tasks and use cases.

The Atommash Association, for example, has introduced vibration certificates and predictive diagnostics technologies for machine tools to prevent failures. Transneft has completely rebuilt the dispatch control and management system. Sibur has implemented a pipeline leak detection system based on data analysis technologies and using drones. This will enable the business to transition to new models of infrastructure maintenance. The company is also actively introducing digital twins. The plant "Stankomashkompleks" has expanded digital services for its machine tools based on digital twins and industrial Internet of things technologies. These are just some of the notable examples.

Modern manufacturing generates a huge amount of data; powerful systems are needed to make decisions based on them. Siemens' open cloud platform MindSphere, for example, connects the physical infrastructure with the digital environment, enables efficient use of equipment based on data analysis.

In addition, new requirements have arisen for the service. At the peak of the pandemic, it became more difficult to conduct, as the physical presence of workers at the sites was not always possible. Therefore, the industry is waiting for modern solutions that require little or no maintenance.

Additional stimulating factors for digital transformation and automation of industrial processes are the geographical remoteness of facilities in Russia and the lack of necessary competencies in certain regions. Digitalization allows you to organize centralized remote access, helping to solve these issues.