On June 23 rd, the MCCI, the Representative Office of the State of Bavaria in Russia and the Contact Office for Small and Medium Businesses of the Eastern Committee of the German Economy held an online conference "Internet of Things - Opportunities and Prospects for Cooperation between Russia and Germany.”
"Of the German states, Bavaria has the highest trade turnover with Russia : in the first quarter of this year, despite the pandemic, it increased by 20% compared to the same period of last year," said Mr. Andreas Brunnbauer, the Moderator of the first part of the event and the official representative of Bavaria in Russia. The topic of digitalization is very important for the Russian-German cooperation. The GRID (the German-Russian Initiative for Digitization) initiative, supported by the Eastern Committee, the Russian Union of Industrialists and Entrepreneurs and other organizations of our countries, contributes to its development.
"It is gratifying that such events have become a tradition, their effect is huge; we are attentive to the initiatives voiced at them, especially in the field of high technologies that demonstrate their relevance and efficiency at all stages and in all processes of industrial production, logistics, trade, inter-factory cooperation," said Mr.Vladimir Dozhdev, the Director of the Digital Technology Department of the Russian Ministry of Industry and Trade in his welcoming speech. “Our task is to promote information exchange and strengthen cooperative ties between the participants of these events, as well as to successfully implement agreements at the level of governments and specific businesses.
"This is not the first event that we have organized together with the Bavarian Representative Office; we are looking for ways to discover solutions of mutual interest for Russian and Bavarian companies," reminded Mr.Suren Vardanyan, the Vice President of the MCCI. According to him, the IoT (Internet of Things) market will amount to trillions of dollars in the nearest years and the technical re-equipment will affect not only large companies but also small and medium - sized businesses. "The MCCI sees its role as a facilitator of this development and its participation is relevant for national and international programs," emphasized Mr. Vardanyan. “We consider the cooperation with German business to be one of the key points of interaction, which has been historically proven to be reliable and promising in realizing new projects.” He noted the Ministry of Industry and Trade's contribution to digitalization and stressed that Russian companies feel comfortable working with their German counterparts. "I sincerely expect," he said, "that our cooperation will grow, develop and strengthen.”
Our bilateral interest in regards to today's topic is enormous," said Mr. Jens Boellmann, the Moderator of the second part of the event and Head of the Contact Office for Small and Medium-sized Businesses at the German Eastern Committee of the German Economy. We are happy to listen to experts, who are ready to lead us into the mysterious world of the Internet of Things. He noted that the high-level dialogues between politicians of the two countries had a positive influence on business cooperation: specifically, 95% of the polled members of the Association of German Machine-Builders stated that they see prospects for cooperation with Russian business.
The Project Manager of “Bayern Innovativ Technology”, Mr.Robert Kuronne, gave a presentation on the "Current Development Trends in the Internet of Things with a focus on IoT-Security.” He spoke about the company's cybersecurity platform for industry and the economy as a whole. He said the Internet of Things is booming and has tremendous promise. "Network structures, machines, databases, power grids, etc., - all this forms a big new world, and it is a fragile world," he stressed. “Cybercrime in the industry grows every year. Our platform has shaped the best practices for protecting it." The speaker went on to describe specific methods of action in this area, giving examples of solutions for specific enterprises.
Mr. Vladimir Litoshenko, the Senior Vice President of the “First Line Software”, Head of the “RUSSOFT Export Committee, reminded the audience of the history and current trends in the development of the Internet of Things. He spoke about interesting technological solutions in this area - the “Smart Coffee Cup” and “Smart Parking Projects”, the activities of the RUSSOFT association, and noted that the industrial Internet of Things is actively developing today, thanks to new technologies, and that the volume of this market will grow to $10 trillion by 2025.
He introduced the audience to the project of IT solutions for a hydroelectric power plant. "The Internet of Things is a key driver and provides the basis for the transition to Industry 4.0," he emphasized, referring, in particular, to a survey of manufacturing executives conducted by Deloitte. In his report, the speaker touched on security, noting that "the more infrastructural devices begin to interact, the greater the opportunity for them to be hacked."
Mr. David Siep, the Head of the dDgital Production Group at the “Knorr-Bremse Systeme für Schienenfahrzeuge GmbH”, dedicated his presentation to successful examples of IoT implementation in Germany. He spoke about his company and the different ways of processing company’s data in order to reduce and optimize production processes, horizontal and vertical integration in data analysis, and the six steps of data handling. He said the company has created a “Thing Worx” platform with different interfaces. "On this platform, we want to create applications that link the world of manufacturing with the world of design, which will produce a synergistic effect," shared his plans the speaker.
The “BotCraft GmbX” representative, Ms. Sanna Rieder, told the audience about how the “BotCraft Smart Factory” designer is mastering autonomous manufacturing processes and launching the provision of new data-flow-driven services. "All equipment, regardless of its age, can be networked together," she said. - The Internet of Things must be implemented in manufacturing to remain competitive." The speaker described how this process takes place and presented an example of how a smart modular system works, which can integrate with any data platforms installed at customer’s facilities.
Mr.Marco Bray, theStrategy Director for Russia, Belarus, and Central Asia at Siemens, spoke about the principles and benefits of the company's “Mendix” platform, which can be integrated into all manufacturing processes with cybersecurity in mind, and examples of its use at various enterprises.
Mr. Alexander Zadorozhny, the Head of Business Development at the “Tsifra Group of Companies”, made a presentation, titled "Best practices of Industry 4.0 implementation for the industrial sector during the COVID-19 outbreak; lessons, results and values. He spoke about his company's activities and presented three cases in the field of mechanical engineering, implemented by the specialists of “Digitra” in India, Germany and Switzerland. The speaker presented the audience to the MDCplus product, which enables a company to integrate equipment of different ages into a single network, and gave examples of its implementation and the effects achieved with its help in the mining industry during the pandemic.
Mr. Maxim Karpukhin, the Business Development Director of “ APROTEKH”, made a presentation, titled "Kaspersky IoT Secure Gateway (KISG) 100 and the experience of cooperation with Siemens". He spoke about the concept of "cyber security" and the solution the company offers in this regard. "If previously, only IT specialists talked about cyber security, now it is one of the main concerns for business," the speaker emphasized. According to him, the number of cyber threats has increased a hundredfold over the past six years.
The traditional approach in this area is expensive, complicated and significantly slows down the transition to Industry 4.0 - "we need solutions that already have the basic principles of cybersecurity in their foundation. He talked about a new approach for creating these principles - the “Industrial Data Gateway” solution, whose task is to collect and convert data and then send it to cloud platforms.
The “ClimateGuard”’s CEO, Mr. Vladimir Ladygin, introduced the audience to the comprehensive climate monitoring and control platform, which measures up to 23 climate parameters, including the most complex ones, and transmits data through any interfaces. The device has several versions - office, street, etc., configured for different tasks. The platform and sensors are essentially a construction set: the user gets the set of sensors he needs and pays the minimum price for the solution.
"We distinguish three target markets," the speaker explained, "these are consumer electronics and education (owned Eco - monitoring projects, owned health, owned productivity); residential and commercial real estate; farms and industries.” The speaker discussed the experience of the platform implementation at the Golden Ring Hotels’ facilities, in a co-working capacity and in a large Russian store - these projects include the research of climate impact on employees.
At the end of the Conference, the Moderators thanked the organizers, the speakers and translators of the event and encouraged the audience to send in their questions, which will be forwarded to the speakers.