Nikolai Solomon: “Colossal losses are found at enterprises. Nikolai Solomon: “Colossal losses are found at enterprises “There are no more than two thousand such experts”

How to help enterprises reach a qualitatively new level of production organization, ensure a stable increase in labor productivity and competitiveness, Nikolai Solomon, General Director of the Federal Competence Center for Labor Productivity, told VK.

Among the leaders

How do you assess the prospects for the implementation of the national project to increase labor productivity in our region?

Samara region is among the leaders. In general, in each region of the country there is a certain number of enterprises that, according to the established criteria, are suitable for participating in this national project - in terms of revenue, in terms of share foreign capital. You have a lot of such enterprises, about three hundred. At the same time, we plan to involve 215 large and medium-sized companies in the project over five years. At 26 enterprises, we will improve production by means of " federal center competencies” (FCC). They will become, in fact, exemplary. Based on their experience, other enterprises will be actively involved in the program. Now in the Samara region, the FCC is already actively working with nine, two more are entering the project as new participants.

- What results show the Samara enterprises - participants of the project?

We include enterprises in the program in “waves”, two or three in each. The enterprises of the first or third wave have already shown quite good results - primarily in terms of the productivity of individual production flows. In some cases, it rises to 40%. For example, at the Srednevolzhsky Mechanical Plant, productivity increased by 38%. But it is important not to confuse these figures with the dynamics of the overall labor productivity at the enterprise. After all, for now we undertake to improve and optimize only one of the production flows or products. Of course, we choose the largest one so that the results of optimization have a noticeable impact on the performance of the entire company.

Eliminate losses first

Many “old school” production workers are convinced that to increase labor productivity, it is enough to purchase new equipment. You start with the introduction of “lean production”, choosing the production system of Rosatom as the base one. Why do you think this approach is correct?

Both our and foreign practice shows that it is impossible to start the process of increasing labor productivity with the purchase of new fixed assets. And the key idea of ​​the labor productivity improvement program is that at the first stages, enterprises realize their potential, eliminate their losses without additional financial investments. By the way, the FCC also provides expert support not at the expense of companies, but at the expense of the federal budget.

So the task of our experts is to first level the production flow, determine its speed and time of its flow. Together with the employees of the enterprise, develop and implement an action plan aimed at optimizing this flow. It is the introduction of the "lean manufacturing" system that gives a quick and impressive effect at the first stage.

And to what level is it possible to raise the efficiency of using the equipment that is already at the enterprise?

Before the start of the project, the enterprises with which we work, the equipment utilization rate is usually 50-60%. When we finish the project in six months, this figure reaches 85-90%. Moreover, the load level of 75% is considered good even for leading European manufacturers.

In FCC practice, it very often turns out that, completing the first stage of a project, an enterprise often abandons previously planned investments in the purchase of new equipment. The management sees that with proper optimization of the production flow and competent loading of existing equipment, on the contrary, one or two units are also released.

Does this mean that the enterprises participating in the program to increase labor productivity are not taken to the modernization of fixed assets immediately, but already at the final stage, when the system of "lean production" is implemented and works successfully?

Yes, and for this, soft loans are provided for the purchase of new equipment. If the director sees that it is possible to produce more, if he can prove that operators and equipment are fully loaded, that labor productivity is high enough, and the capabilities of the equipment that is available are no longer enough for growth, then the enterprise can receive such a loan through “ Industry Development Fund.

Completely change your mind

How do managers and employees of the enterprises that are included in the project perceive the implemented production system?

The reaction is very different. First shock, rejection. Then thoughts, retraction and so on. But everyone's behavior is different. It all depends on who these changes concern in the first place. Often, production managers, technologists, chief engineers have the most negative reaction at the very beginning. And after a few months they become just the guardians of this system. They have to completely turn their minds around. Because these experienced specialists, by virtue of their accumulated experience, already endure management decisions to automatism. And what we are introducing and promoting is a completely different, new production culture. You must always look for losses and shortcomings - even in those processes that you consider to be perfect for a long time.

This is the principle and culture of the work of the Japanese. A person who does not ask himself any questions and claims regarding how efficiently he works is already “dead” for development. That is, all employees constantly submit some proposals, improvements, depending on the level of management. And in this sense, managers are making much more serious decisions related to the relocation of factories, the optimization of production areas, and so on.

- Do you think it is the training of people that is the key moment that will allow us to move the national project forward?

I would say that it is information, education and practice. The theory describes a chain of successive states through which a person passes in such cases: "Understand - accept - want - do." Everything we talk about in our program is a very significant transformation of the production process, these are big changes in any enterprise. The director is obliged to take both himself and his team out of the comfort zone in order to move into a qualitatively new state. And for this you need to change something. Change first of all in yourself, and then in others.

In this sense, any CEO is the first of the whole team to become a “role model”. It is he who sets the tone, creates the rules: what is “good”, what is “bad”, for which we praise people, and for what we scold. And training is a way of improving knowledge and training for the implementation of new tasks. People need to understand how these tools and skills can be used to meet new challenges.

Among the enterprises that express a desire to participate in the project, not all pass the qualifying stage. Who is weeded out by the FCC?

Among those who do not immediately get into the program, or, let's say, lose in this selection, one of the most important criteria is the lack of ambitions among the management and shareholders of enterprises - ambitions at the level of production indicators.

After all, the desire to participate is not enough. If you do not have clear, ambitious goals for profit growth, for expanding your market share by increasing the competitiveness of the product, reducing its cost, and so on, then there is no ground for optimizing and changing something. After all, the final result in any case is measured by all understandable indicators of the enterprise's economy. And if they do not change as a result of such transformations, then, in fact, it is not worth even starting.

The preliminary results shown by the participants show that we are doing everything right. Now the project includes more than a hundred enterprises from 16 subjects of the Russian Federation. It is predicted that 70% of the plants that completed their projects on selected streams in 2018 will experience productivity growth of more than 10% per year. And businesses are trying. Most importantly, the “appetite” that directors have in the process of working with “lean production”, with this culture, does not go away after the first steps taken with the support of FCC experts.

At the beginning of the project, the enterprises with which we work, the equipment utilization rate is 50-60%. And when we finish the project, it already reaches 85-90%

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“Labor productivity is a fundamental indicator that reflects many aspects of an enterprise's activities in one figure, shows the actual efficiency of production and administrative processes. Our task is to help the enterprises participating in the project "jump over their heads" and reach a qualitatively new level of management, ensure a stable increase in productivity and competitiveness.”

short biography

Born on January 3, 1971 in Moscow. In 1993 he graduated from the Moscow Automobile and Road Institute, in 1995 - the Moscow Finance Academy under the Government Russian Federation. Specialties - "mechanical engineer of road-building machines", "economist in international economic relations". Member of the Association of Chartered Accountants in England and Wales.

From 1994 to 2003 worked in various positions in the audit and management consulting departments of PricewaterhouseCoopers (consulting large companies in the energy sector).

From 2003 to 2005 - department director project management, and about. General Director of the Financial and Accounting Center of OAO Yukos-Moscow.

Since 2005, he worked as a financial controller and director for economics and controlling at OJSC Siberian Coal Energy Company (OJSC SUEK).

From February 2009 to January 2010 - Deputy General Director State Corporation for Atomic Energy "Rosatom" for Finance.

Since February 2010 - Deputy General Director of the State Atomic Energy Corporation "Rosatom" for Economics and Finance.

Since April 2011 - First Deputy General Director for Corporate Functions - Chief Financial Officer of the State Atomic Energy Corporation Rosatom. The key areas in the area of ​​responsibility are the search for internal reserves to improve efficiency and productivity and the systemic deployment of the Rosatom Production System (RPS) at the enterprises of the State Corporation.

Since July 2018 - General Director of ANO "Federal Competence Center in the field of labor productivity"

In a conversation with Business FM, the director of the Federal Competence Center for Increasing Labor Productivity compared Toyota and Volkswagen and noted that Russia still “cannot even become a Volkswagen”

Nicholas Solomon. Photo: Anton Novoderezhkin / TASS

As part of the Moscow Financial Forum, the head of the Federal Competence Center for Increasing Labor Productivity, Nikolai Solomon, told Business FM Editor-in-Chief Ilya Kopelevich about what kind of assistance the center can provide Russian companies.

In our studio, Nikolai Solomon, director of the Federal Competence Center in the field of increasing labor productivity. This is a structure that operates under the auspices of the Ministry of Economic Development and VEB and as part of the implementation of the national project to increase labor productivity. Despite the goals that are repeated every year and set again and again, according to this indicator, the Russian economy looks bad, looks weak, and our labor productivity growth rates do not catch up with the world average, and we continue to lag behind. What are you doing to change this?

Nicholas Solomon: I think that this is a certain evolution, the evolution of the transition from a planned economy to a market economy, and the first experience that we have in the country was focused on all kinds of creation of corporations, the acquisition of companies, investments in technology, in order to somehow meet the requirements for competitive advantages or even the technical characteristics of the product in the international arena. Nevertheless, by the way, one of the challenges, in addition to the two-fold lag in labor productivity, is the large number of imported goods that we continue to consume in the Russian Federation. This means that we are not able to produce competitive goods that can compete even in the domestic market, not to mention going abroad. For example, in some categories of consumption, imports are 70%.

Nicholas Solomon: Not quite so, we didn’t even set such a goal. That is, if this is a reason for you to think, then the next step you should simply ask yourself is: why are the consumer properties of our individual products or their cost price lower? This is where the analysis of how efficiently we spend our resources per unit of manufactured goods begins, which directly affects its cost.

Where are these shortcomings that you can help enterprises eliminate, you are like a consultant on behalf of the state, a free consultant, a consultant?

Nicholas Solomon: Yes, now the government has suggested that businesses think about the fact that, guys, you can become much more efficient than you are now. But you very often lack attention, knowledge and opportunities, primarily financial, because help is coming, and financial too, how to increase the value of your business and increase profits. We are talking about the culture of lean manufacturing. Its ancestor for us was the Japanese company Toyota, which managed, without cutting staff, to become one of the largest automaker corporations in the world with the highest margins. Today it receives revenue approximately on a par with Volkswagen. These are the two largest corporations in the world, with Toyota's marginal return twice that of Volkswagen. And what is the meaning of this culture of lean manufacturing? Every Toyota employee today makes his contribution to the growth of the company's capitalization. Over the past 30 years such rationalization proposals, similar in name to those in the Soviet Union, submitted more than 40 million proposals. That is, besides the fact that technology is an integral part of the growth of any business, this project is not about technology. The project is about how to increase the profitability and capitalization of the company by investing in the knowledge of people, in the skills of people who are able to analyze their production processes in such a way as to halve the time of these processes, to halve the production time of the product, to produce with the same people and resources twice as much. And these are the miracles we call losses. In any production there are losses, somewhere they are more, somewhere they are less.

We have compared Toyota and Volkswagen so far. Why can't Volkswagen do what Toyota does? If the Germans fail, then why will we succeed, like the Japanese?

Nicholas Solomon: Let's just say they can't become Toyota, but we can't even become Volkswagen, so let's not analyze why the latter cannot catch up with the former, but say to ourselves: let's enter the top three, and then we will think, why they failed.

That is, the method is still universal, the question is in the rating in this case.

Nicholas Solomon: You have to think for yourself first. To be honest, I can speculate on why Volkswagen isn't catching up with Toyota, but I'm wondering why...

Does he use the same methods in organizing, motivating staff? ..

Nicholas Solomon: Virtually everything that happens in the world is one copy or another of Toyota. Because if you look at all the literature or books about basic principles, everything was born there, everything was born from the first loom. Toyota was originally a textile factory. They invented the first machine. Then, when they realized that it was necessary to increase productivity and the machines were idle for a third of the shift, they came up with an automatic stop of the machine when the thread broke. They began to think about how to make production continuous and of high quality. And so the thread was torn, there was a third of the marriage, the machine could stand idle, and so on. Today, in this Toyota culture, there is no downtime, they have eliminated all these losses associated with the inefficient use of production, equipment, personnel, thereby squeezing the resources that are most efficiently used in the production of their products.

It is customary in our country to believe that the general director is the engine of progress, if it exists anywhere at all, and the chief accountant is the engine of savings, who cuts even those costs that, as it seems to the production workers, should never be cut. We're really used to it. And we remember a lot of jokes about innovators from Soviet times. Who are the most interested clients in terms of your help? Are they private companies, large companies, small companies, medium-sized companies? Who is more receptive to the experience you are willing to share?

Nicholas Solomon: The most receptive is the one who works in tough market, competitive conditions, this is our number one client. But even this client is very different from each other, it can be companies that literally survive already on the market, that's all, their competition has covered. And there are people who plan for many years to come continuous activity, growth, they are interested in how they will achieve this growth and how they competitive advantages on the contrary, they will move away from themselves. The hardest thing is to be first. Either you will wait for someone to catch up with you, or you will continue to lead. Therefore, these are mostly private companies. There are no state-owned companies, although participation is voluntary, that is, any company that fits the list of five basic non-primary industries can take part in the project: manufacturing, transport, Agriculture, construction and housing and communal services. Moreover, the revenue range of these companies is approximately from 400 million to 30 billion rubles. Why this contingent? Because, in fact, these are small companies that cannot afford to keep specialists at the level of the federal center of competence. What are we really doing? We redistribute the knowledge and experience of our specialists, who previously worked in large corporations, in such production systems (they know how to apply productivity tools) and provide them to those enterprises that cannot hire expensive consultants.

What are these consultants for anyway? So they came to an enterprise, a factory ... Whom did they come to, to the general director, owner, chairman of the board of directors - with whom to work? Because we do not have such a culture, and there are many reasons why it does not exist and there is no faith in it ...

Nicholas Solomon: We come first of all to the general director. Very often shareholders also participate in these meetings, the shareholder is even better, because he is interested in what we offer. And the number one task is to interest this director by showing him the real possibilities of his enterprise using the example of other enterprises. That is, what do we do at the entrance? We interest directors by sending them for internships in one of the the best companies, effectively using the tools of lean manufacturing. In particular, to the Kovrov Mechanical Plant of Rosatom in Kovrov. These are two days of initiation into lean manufacturing, after which CEOs come out completely different. And they speak absolutely honestly after these two days: listen, we heard a lot about consultants, we even tried to do something, but we have never seen anything like this in Russia. Accordingly, they begin to understand that this can happen to their staff. As soon as the project starts, together with them we try, with the working group, to develop the first steps to eliminate problems, to map processes, to clock the loading time of the machine operator, to say: guys, why is it taking so long, why is the conveyor here, why did it stop there worker, why is here 50% are resting? All these “whys” lead to the identification of those problems that the CEO and the shareholder may not know, because they do not appear on the site, may not notice, because they have always worked this way and believe that this is true.

Inevitably.

Nicholas Solomon: And we come and ask the simplest questions that make them think that these are all losses. In any process that you have not optimized, up to 70% of the actions are waste. When we enter the enterprise, on average, the loading of personnel and equipment on them is 50-60%. When a project is completed in six months, the workload of personnel and equipment is 85%, which means that you are 35% more efficient in using the money that you invest in equipment, in personnel.

Do I understand correctly that you are primarily involved in the education of top managers?

Nicholas Solomon: Yes, but we do it directly on the production line. Our main result is the change in specific specifications product flow. That is, for example, after three months, your metal production on this line increased from 100,000 tons to 350,000 tons with the same resource and the same equipment.

When you started this conversation, you gave figures that the culture of Toyota, if taken as an absolute, is based not on the efforts of a top manager, but on the involvement of an ordinary employee, his absolute interest in improving the production process. Accordingly, a reasonable response from management is always on this initiative. Is it even possible for us?

Nicholas Solomon: different situations happen in life...

How many years does a team need to exist so that ordinary employees in it, who do not receive the salary of these same top managers, and often receive a hundred, or maybe a thousand times less, act like that? In general, do not care, their first question is the question of salary.

Nicholas Solomon: There is no need to look at the wage gap at all, this is not the reason for the lack of work. There is a certain level of earnings that allows you to keep this specialist at the enterprise, it’s just that any enterprise should find it in the right way and say to itself: but then we will give you something more that will make work at our enterprise attractive. And even if you are not going to work at our enterprise for a hundred years, as it happens in Japan, the so-called lifetime job, then, most likely, after working with us for some time, you will understand that, all other things being equal, you are growing here as a specialist, your the career ladder is also changing, it's just profitable for you to work in our company. Therefore, you need to work with the management - this is what I was talking about, because all the same, at a certain point in the incremental changes, you need to turn to the management and say - the next step, the next project, the next production line. You do not grab all the lines immediately in production. That is, when we leave, we take one production line for the production of one product. It is important for us to make a sample. And this is only 10-15 people of specialists working on this line. And then you produce a different range, other types of products, this should be replicated over time. I can say that the company, for example, has about a thousand people, which is at least two years. In two years, 500 out of that 1,000 will believe in this frugality and start using these tools and making a difference. That is, we are doing a pilot project, we are showing both ordinary employees and management that this culture needs to be introduced. You already have a sample at the enterprise, you have two trainers trained by us, all the skills and tools of lean manufacturing have been transferred to you, which can then be very easily applied. The main thing is to have the desire to change, the main thing is to open projects one after another.

I will return to the general figures. When people talk about very low growth rates of labor productivity in Russia, the first thing they say, of course, is the lack of investment and outdated equipment. That is, first of all, the equipment on which this production takes place affects labor productivity. You, as I understand it, are engaged only in motivation. How would you say, having experience, what is now in shares, what are the main factors - underinvestment or lack of experience in organizing and motivating staff to reduce costs and increase added value?

Nicholas Solomon: Everything matters. That is, to say that investments do not affect the growth of labor productivity is wrong. But if it is obvious that your machine is the last bottleneck for productivity growth and it holds all the main flow because its performance is not up to the desired or competitive... Of course, the equipment is very important. You see, what’s the matter: spending money on equipment is not a big deal, I just compared my quality, my machines, went and bought the same thing, but I bought the equipment, it unleashed this bottleneck for me, and all the way back from I have matured five more bottlenecks. Why? Because this ill-conceived investment in equipment like plugging holes and debottlenecking does not solve the problem of efficient production. What needs to be done first? Without investing a dime, break down your entire production flow to the bone, see what you can do without money. Because this new equipment will come to you, but people will continue to take care of it in the same way as before. In Japan, equipment manufactured in the 1970s is working, it is serviced on time, it does not get up unexpectedly, you do not have to order spare parts for it and wait for two months, and at this time the equipment is idle. A large number of losses that are the causes of inefficient production planning. Until people learn to value their time, the time of machines, to evaluate the results of their work through this very load of personnel, equipment, the time of the process, the growth of labor productivity, nothing will change. When they draw out all this internal reserve, when they get rid of a lot of this inefficiency due to their own professionalism, then you can buy a car, then we will all say: “Listen, we seem to have squeezed everything we could out of ourselves.” By the way, the Industry Development Fund works according to this principle, which allocates 1% per annum for five years, up to 300 million rubles. One percent per annum! You won't find these numbers anywhere.

I wanted to ask what kind of money you give, because you said that you bring money as well. Not only ideas, but also money.

Nicholas Solomon: This is the Industrial Development Fund, they issue loans at 1% per annum for five years, up to 300 million rubles. Naturally, this is a very good motivation. And, as it turns out, this is not the most important thing. We are now working in more than 250 companies, and only 30 of them have applied for concessional financing. That is, it turns out that the motivation in this project is completely different - they need knowledge, they need trained personnel, they need efficient production, primarily from the point of view of how I generally manage production.

The Federal Competence Center in the field of labor productivity is a new structure created by the Ministry economic development RF for the implementation of the National Project "Labor Productivity and Employment Support". This autonomous non-profit organization pursues the most important goal: to overcome the backlog of the Russian economy in terms of productivity. About how this can be achieved and what reserves of efficiency are “hidden” in Russian industrial enterprises, Invest-Foresight talks with Nikolai Solomon, Director General of the Federal Center.

“The main goal is to increase labor productivity”

- your center - new organization. How was it founded and, most importantly, why?

- Yes, we were formed recently - at the end of 2017, but we began to work actively somewhere from the middle of last year. Our main mission is to provide enterprises with a human resource: experts in the field of lean manufacturing who can transfer their knowledge, and most importantly, skills, to those enterprises that participate in this project. The main goal is to increase labor productivity at medium and large enterprises basic non-primary sectors of the Russian economy at least 5% per year by 2024. It is very difficult to achieve such a result right away, because over the past 5 years, productivity growth in Russia has been only 1.2% per year. So the task is ambitious. The National Productivity Project consists of three federal projects. The first one is called "System Support Measures" - this is everything that the state, represented by federal and regional authorities, is doing to provide business with infrastructure and regulatory framework. The second is our federal project, which I am the head of, it is called “Targeted Support for Enterprises”. These are the same specialists who go to the enterprises. And the third project is in the area of ​​​​responsibility of the Ministry of Labor: its goal is for the released personnel to receive the necessary skills in order to be employed precisely in their profession.

- And what is your KPI? How are you trying to provide “targeted assistance to enterprises”?

- First of all, it is assumed that labor productivity will increase at the enterprise by 10%, 15% and 30% over 3 years. This result is achieved at the enterprise level directly by opening an exemplary production flow, which we select with the leaders of the enterprise and which makes a significant contribution to the cost of its production, so that the optimization of this flow affects the results of the company as a whole. Plus a training program, plus a knowledge base that will become a tool for those who do not have time to take part in the program. I want to make a reservation right away: our key goal is to increase production and revenue and engage in the same import substitution. That is, first of all, products that are competitive in price and quality. It's even better if we sell more products overseas.

There are no centers like ours in Russia now, and there are no places where those who are interested in the experience of the Toyota company, the experience of the Mercedes company, the Rosatom company, where I worked, can quickly gain knowledge, ranging from books and ending with practical tools and examples. We will post examples on the website, talking about how this or that enterprise has already achieved results. It is very important that enterprises have the opportunity to compare themselves with each other.

— So, your most important tool is business trips of experts to enterprises?

- Yes, help directly at the enterprise, and these are experts who in the past are people who have worked at the enterprise for many years. By the way, we also have general directors of entire industries. They have a little more knowledge than an ordinary specialist in the Russian Federation.

— The paradox is that a visiting expert knows more than local experts.

— When we select enterprises to participate in the program, we already understand whether our experts will be useful there or not, the selection is very high quality. And we are not forcing anyone to do it. Companies contact us for own initiative. Then we go to production and see if there really is potential for productivity growth. And most importantly, whether the CEO wants it. Because if an enterprise has already worked quite well with such tools before, we are ready to conclude that the level of the production system at the enterprise is high.

Why is such a conclusion necessary?

- One of the support measures that has already been offered to enterprises is concessional financing. Today, the Industrial Development Fund, under the auspices of the Ministry of Industry and Trade, is ready to issue loans for enterprises participating in our program for very favorable conditions: up to 300 million rubles for 5 years at 1% per annum for the manufacturing industry. The credit is issued for manufacturing enterprises, and it must be “earned”. We first say that the enterprise has exhausted all internal reserves and everything has been done to ensure that the production efficiency corresponds at least to the level of advanced enterprises in the country. After that we say that yes, it seems that the enterprise justifiably asks for money for modernization, internal reserves have been exhausted at this particular production site and, indeed, it is necessary to invest and, due to this, to get those very missing percentages of productivity.

By the end of the year, we expect to issue about 15 such conclusions, we are actively approached by enterprises participating in the project. And not only those with whom we work: any businessman in the region with which the Ministry of Economic Development has signed an agreement on participation in the program can apply to the project.

- In a sense, is it more efficient for you to work with "backward enterprises"?

— You know, we like to work with “backward enterprises”, because there is a huge potential there. Now, in the first year of operation, we are, in fact, skimming the cream. Colossal losses are immediately discovered, past which everyone walked, no one saw them. And then on the same production line, people set themselves more and more ambitious goals. And for new goals, such fine tuning is already beginning. Now you take some separate production, on it the production flow and make those improvements that can be done in six months. They are not yet so deeply deposited in the minds of ordinary employees. Our task is that in three years, in four years, every employee at the enterprise would make suggestions for improvements (in the Soviet Union this was called “rational proposals”), this would create a culture of change and make the process of change continuous. When 50% of the company's employees submit proposals on their own, this is the target result that we would like to achieve.

“There are no more than two thousand such experts”

Where do you get your experts from? And not just experts, but those whose competence is higher than that of local directors?

- The expert you took away will become an employee of the Center?

— Yes, these are all our employees, whom we distribute by regions. We have regional managers by federal districts.

— How many field experts do you have now?

- Now the FCC employs about 90 people. Approximately 40-45 of them are this platform resource. We have a separate division that deals only with training. We have 12 methods, which give tools to enterprises step by step in great detail. Therefore, we, in fact, still have a mission to educate employees like us. We do it right at the factories, gradually transferring training programs to them. At each plant, we will definitely educate one or two trainers. We leave them trained people who can subsequently, when moving from one production line the next to train new and new, and so on. One of our employees for six months of work at the enterprise, in principle, can educate another eight to ten specialists similar to him, because these people have worked out all the skills right in their production. Thus, we are not just looking for ready-made specialists, especially since half of them became specialists themselves not so long ago. Our task is to train the same specialists. According to our calculations, in 5 years we can educate about 20,000 similar specialists.

— How long does your team of experts usually work at the enterprise?

- Usually six months, and the first three months of hard work account for 80-90% of the load. From the very beginning, our people stand next to the production people and start mapping with them manufacturing process, take all the timekeeping: how long the product is being produced, how busy the equipment is, how busy the staff is, what level of inventory is along the entire flow, from the warehouse of raw materials to the warehouse finished products. Thus, we digitize the production flow, giving it quantitative and qualitative characteristics. The goal of the project is that in half a year we will show the result already in the re-formed production flow, proving that the inventory turnover has decreased and the production process time has decreased, sometimes tenfold or even more. For example, many are moving away from forklifts and overhead shop cranes as they move to smaller batches. These are the very inconspicuous changes that give understandable savings.

Secrets of efficiency

- I would like concrete examples.

— One of my favorite examples is the Sredne-Volzhsky Mechanical Plant (SVMZ), with which we started working at the beginning of last year. The plant manufactures shaped charge casings, which are used in hydraulic fracturing. SVMZ is a supplier of oil and gas companies. The so-called process time, the production time for these cases has been reduced from 6300 minutes for one cap, one cap, to six minutes. Their work-in-progress has been reduced from 54 thousand of these cases to 1300. As a result of such improvements, monetary resource, the so-called working capital, which is very necessary for enterprises to modernize the same fixed assets. At the plant, shift output increased from 220 to 314 buildings, that is, by 43%.

Another very important factor— reduction of production areas. In this particular case, the area was reduced by almost 20%, it became possible to install new equipment and open new production lines.

The number of operators in the stream decreased by 32%. This is also very important point when, having measured the coefficient of useful labor with a stopwatch, you understand that 50% of the time your worker works as a “machine watchman”: he inserted some part into processing and sits, waits, looks. At the same time, he can serve one or two more machines, his load becomes 100%. There is no need to keep four operators, two are enough.

By the way, this tool helps to grow wages, because if you optimize the payroll, you can redistribute, for example, 30% of the saved payroll to those who began to work more intensively.

The setup time for the machine tool at SVMZ was reduced from eight hours to one. If you change the range of production from one type to another within a month, you need to readjust the equipment. While this readjustment is taking place, the equipment is standing still. It used to stand for eight hours, now it only stands for an hour thanks to a simple change. Previously, this adjuster climbed into a box in which all the tools were scattered somehow, but now he has a standard set of screwdrivers, and he clearly knows in which order to do which operation. The fitter drives out with this ready-made set to the changeover site, and miracles happen. This is just one example.

Another important example is the AK Bars enterprise in Tatarstan. Before the arrival of our specialists, the productivity at this power transmission tower plant was about 100 thousand tons per month, by the end of our project it is already 350 thousand tons per month - and this is not the limit!

— By what miracle?

- First, the correct organization of production. Previously, they simultaneously launched 10 sets of power lines into the stream to produce. Thus, confusion appeared inside the flow, stocks and details that were not aligned in terms of the speed of the flow were accumulating, they thinned out, waited. Oddly enough, if you launch two lines of power transmission poles into the stream, your stream becomes smoother, you control each operation. Due to the fact that it works much faster, you run the same 10 supports more efficiently and consciously. This is called "batch size reduction". The Japanese have such a concept - "single production", that is, ideally, they should generally launch one power line at a time, but do everything very quickly, just like on a conveyor, and this gives you a tangible effect. The same thing happened to Boeing at one time, which used to produce the 737th model per month in the amount of 15 pieces, and now they produce 28. If you just compare the pictures, then before these are fuselages randomly scattered around the workshop, where people run with screwdrivers; It is not clear where the person is now running and what he is doing. Now it is an understandable conveyor, where the planes go one after another and the fuselages are in one place. People clearly know at what point which part to deliver. In general, there are a lot of tools. When entering production, we put a production map in front of us and ask to draw a diagram of the movement of the product during the production cycle. We call it a spaghetti chart because it often looks like spaghetti, and if you different colors designate the production flow, workflow, and so on, you will go crazy. Therefore, one of the improvements that we make is that people rearrange the equipment in the workshop in such a way that the flow is clearly formed, so that it is clear how the part goes step by step, without making unnecessary movements, without jumping to another workshop for a kilometer. But there are cases when, for the sake of one operation, a part from one plant is sent to another, to another city.

Aid scaling

- Do you have a large funnel? How many companies do you deal with?

- It is planned to cover 10,000 enterprises in the program in 5 years. Naturally, we cannot do this on our own. We are opening similar centers in the regions. The centers are the property of the region itself, we train their employees for the first nine months of work in each region. They, just like employees of enterprises, learn these tools from us and become specialists. Great hope is placed on them, because this is the resource that, after we leave the region, continues to work there. I really hope that both consultants and partners from large corporations will also join this project. For example, Rosatom has already taken on the education of its suppliers. Everything happens like in Japan: as soon as you have debugged your production process, you begin to notice that products from suppliers arrive at the wrong time, of the wrong quality, and you need to deal with this without punishing fines and penalties, but by going to production and trying to explain that if you change production now, as we did, then we will receive quality products from you.

— How many projects do you have in your work?

- Now we have more than 80 enterprises already, we work simultaneously in 16 regions. Some of the enterprises are made by our partners from Rosatom, they work mainly in the Nizhny Novgorod region. Starting next year, we plan to cover 350 enterprises a year. If we talk about the plan to cover 10,000 enterprises, then the FCC will take on about 20%, which we will do on our own, the rest will be done by regional centers of competence, consultants or the enterprises themselves.

- Is there any danger that the main motivation of the program participants will be to receive funding, and enterprises will begin, manipulating reports and presentations in every possible way, to “pretend”?

— You know, I was also afraid of this, but to date, out of 80 enterprises, we have completed work on exemplary flows for 40, and only 2 of them have applied for concessional financing. This means that people were interested in something else.

- Well, how is the situation with labor productivity in Russia in general now?

- At the moment, Russia as a whole, on comparable indicators, shows a level of productivity of about $ 24 of added value per hour worked by an employee. For example, in Norway this figure exceeds $70, in the USA - $60, in Europe on average more than $50. We are two, and somewhere three times behind in terms of productivity. This affects the competitiveness of our products. If we are “drier”, more efficient, you see, there will be additional revenue.

Interviewed Konstantin Frumkin