Evraz Group coordinated an IT international conference in Nizhniy Tagil, Sverdlovsk Region, on March 4-6, 2008. This was the first time for the conference to be held in this town, with more than 120 participants from thirty-four Russian, Ukrainian, Czech, American, and South African enterprises arriving to take part in the event. Apart from nearly all of Evraz Group’s members, the conference was attended by such global IT giants as Microsoft, IBM, Xerox, Oracle, Siemens, and some others, the spokesperson for Evraz Group said to UrBC.

The agenda of the conference mainly covered presentations by Evraz Group’s enterprises’ IT departments and reports on the global trends in IT development. Three panels were devoted to software improvement, enhancing IT efficiency in the production process, and the need to unite all of Evraz Group’s computer-aided resources. In addition, tours of Nizhniy Tagil Iron & Steel Works production shops were offered for those interested in learning how automated control systems can be implemented in the metallurgical field.

Information technologies are currently being integrated into all of Evraz Group’s Urals-based enterprises’ production activities (from ore-mining to ready-made rolled products). Firstly, the system used at Nizhniy Tagil Iron & Steel Works makes it possible to get remote access to any data ranging from the amount of goods in stock to the serial number of the last item produced in a shop to the price of the last contract. The operation panels of most pieces of machinery (like blast furnaces and converters) are fitted with visualizing, diagnostic, optimizing, and electronic data storage functions. Secondly, Evraz Group’s Vysokogorskiy Ore Mining and Processing Enterprise is currently using a control system capable of monitoring the major shops’ performance online; it can also keep track of the products’ quality, energy spending, and possibly underused freight carriages. Thirdly, Kachkanar Ore Mining and Processing Enterprise is to become Evraz Group’s first ore mining enterprise to use SAP R/3, the all-purpose multifunctional control system that will monitor virtually every aspect of the enterprise’s activity.

‘Information technologies are a company’s blood circulation system these days; whether you want to expand production, draw up a budget, or simply conduct a meeting, you just can’t do without IT. Even though information technologies are not the key component of mining and metallurgical business, we are still trying to reach the level of IT development that could effectively support our core activity,’ says EvrazHolding’s IT Vice President Igor Gaponov.