IT and artificial intelligence (AI) can make metallurgy more environmentally friendly and efficient, says Yuriy Ryzhenkov, CEO of Metinvest Mining and Metallurgical Group.
He expressed this opinion at the first B7 Italy 2024 meeting held on 13 March in Verona (Italy), organized by Confindustria, an association of Italian companies designed to facilitate dialogue between the business world and the governments of the G7 countries. The conference was attended by more than 250 guests, including CEOs and business leaders from G7 countries and international companies, as well as the Italian Minister of Entrepreneurship and Made in Italy, Adolfo Urso.
The participants discussed the key factors affecting industrial productivity and competitiveness in a rapidly developing global economy. Metinvest’s CEO was one of the speakers on the main discussion panel. He spoke about the peculiarities of steel production in Ukraine during the war, the company’s vision of a “green” course and the transformation of business processes in the steel industry through new technologies.
In particular, he noted that in recent years, many companies have been working on results and ignored technology. For example, in 2021, Azovstal outperformed all its competitors in terms of process efficiency thanks to AI and analytics.
“Our specialists, using augmented reality, could perform maintenance twice as fast as most of our competitors in neighboring countries. The implemented “space” computer vision system has set new standards for the quality of our products. Finally, the internal data management and communications system allowed us to run the company smoothly in the midst of the fiercest war in Europe since World War II,” Ryzhenkov stated.
He added that Metinvest, despite the war, is a very good example of how to use digital technologies to breakthrough in traditional industries.
Speaking about the “green” course in the industry, the CEO emphasized that almost every politician is interested in these issues, not only in Europe but also in the US, China, and around the world. At the same time, the steel industry is at the top of the agenda of this course as a major player in the implementation of green technologies. But at the same time, metallurgy is a very traditional industry, with technologies developed long ago, and it is impossible to make a major breakthrough now. It is only possible to gradually improve the system, he noted.
“The transition to the green course will not be easy. We do not have enough IT specialists to work on the transformation. Only five to seven years ago, we were looking for metallurgical engineers to teach IT. Now it’s the other way around. We train IT specialists who are taught metallurgy. And these are the people who will be in charge of our company’s green and digital transformation. This is happening right now. We will all be part of this transition, and we had better be ready for this challenge,” the top manager summarized.
“Metinvest is a vertically integrated group of steel and mining companies. The group’s enterprises are located mainly in Donetsk, Luhansk, Zaporizhzhia and Dnipro regions.
The main shareholders of the holding are SCM Group (71.24%) and Smart Holding (23.76%), which jointly manage it.
Metinvest Holding LLC is the management company of Metinvest Group.
AI, IT, METALLURGY, METINVEST
