A practical seminar entitled "National Industrial Automation Platform – the key to the future", organized by KNRTU and Gazprom Neft, was held on October 9 in the Round Hall of Building A.

Teachers and students of the Institute of Management, Automation and Information Technologies of KNRTU, as well as specialists from instrumentation and control companies, industrial partners of the university, were invited to participate in the seminar.

The speakers of the seminar were representatives of Gazprom Neft: Sergey Vasiliev, Head of Automation Practice, and Victoria Kukieva, Head of Functional Development at the Department of Information Technology, Automation and Telecommunications. –Today, our guests will tell us about trends in the development of automation management and how they see future specialists, and these issues cannot be solved separately by universities and enterprises, – said Rustam Nurgaliyev, Head of the Department of Automation and process control systems, opening the event.

Using the example of the oil refining industry and Gazprom Neft, the guests talked about the history of domestic industrial automation systems in recent decades, its formation and development in the oil industry – from lamps to industrial twins and AI, as well as about the components of the current National Industrial Automation Platform, industry problems and ways to solve them. The existing automated control system system consists of three levels – from sensors, controllers to SCADA systems and automated control systems for operators of the central control panel. The life of the automated control system equipment is 10-15 years, but industrial installations can work longer, and there are problems here. There is a worldwide transition to platform services and industrial plant chain management, and this, in turn, poses the problem of interaction between a wide variety of specialists and poor manageability. The solution to the domestic problems of the industry is the introduction of a 100% vendor–independent (from foreign suppliers) national industrial automation platform, which ensures the transition to an open multi-level automated control system architecture. A new domestic standard is emerging, automated control systems are becoming flexible and scalable.

– Since 2023, we have teamed up with colleagues from different industries and created a working group on automated control systems, the transition to a new platform is not easy.: The market of domestic automated control systems, although developed, is not complex, and today we need a comprehensive integrator," said Sergey Vasiliev. – The change of the domestic technology platform is irreversible – it means the transition to open platforms, service models, and the achievement of a synergistic effect in business. The active processes taking place in the field of automated control systems today are not a revolution, but rather an evolution.

One of the main issues was personnel: the industry is literally starved of personnel and is in dire need of automation specialists. Among the solutions to the personnel problems proposed at the seminar is the reworking of existing educational programs and the development of new ones. This is the introduction of even more practice-oriented training with the organization of in-depth practices at enterprises and other urgent measures. And the result here can be achieved only through the joint efforts of universities (advanced training, teacher internships), suppliers (vendors) and industrial partners (analysis, ordering, participation in the development of educational programs). Colleagues from Gazprom Neft even proposed the creation of competence laboratories and presented a portrait of a modern specialist in industrial automation.

The students at the seminar were invited to actively participate in the international IT championship of the oil industry conducted by the company. The speaker asked a lot of questions about open automated control system systems, their localization, equipment, modern controllers, etc. "Let's sit down at the table together, open network programs, create updated work plans and programs, laboratory modules," the organizers of the event urged colleagues.

The seminar was attended by the KNRTU partner companies, including SOYUZ-PRIBOR, GKS, KER-Automatika, YOKOGAWA Electric CIS, Inkomsystem, Volga-Automatika, Ai di Automatika, Tattelecom and others.