The management of Tupolev conducted a major audit of the Kazan Aircraft Factory. What are the conclusions?
The plan for the production of civil aircraft will be revised — this was recently announced by the General director of the UAC, Yuri Slyusar. The reasons are not explained, but judging by recent media coverage, past promises (about 600 mainline liners by 2030) are now seen as too optimistic, the aviation industry is not coping. "Tupolev", as it turns out, decided to make such a confession before his colleagues. It is stated that we thought that this year we would easily make four Tu-214s, but when we got into the situation, it became necessary to look at things differently. The correspondent of BUSINESS Online learned about the reasons that led to the "reassessment of values".
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| The decision to resume serial production of the Tu-214 was made in June 2022. |
| Source: BUSINESS Online |
What did the on-site inspection show?
Today, the main question regarding the resumption of serial production of the Tu-214 is one: why are there no visible results? It is natural, because more than two years have passed since June 2022, when the decision on the series was fixed by a comprehensive program for the development of the aviation industry. Meanwhile, two years is the production cycle of one Tu—214 in the absence of any groundwork. But the Kazan Aircraft Factory – a branch of Tupolev (KAZ) did not even lift the car, purchases for which began in 2019, and, according to our data, it has been in the final assembly shop for about two years.
At the same time, if you follow the official statements of Rostec, UAC and Tupolev, there is almost everything for shock work: financing for the appropriate modernization of KAZ, advances from customers, and most importantly, an aircraft mastered in production. The last argument is not questioned by anyone. As for financing, Tupolev did not respond to BUSINESS Online's request. BUSINESS Online sources in the aviation industry claim: "Minnikhanov (Rustam Minnikhanov — rais RT, Chairman of the Board of Directors of Tupolev — ed.) has to pull out money with his teeth." One could assume that the delay is due to the need for import substitution of several dozen components, but this is a parallel production process that does not prevent the plant from making fuselages and other units.
For their cover, the "secrets" were revealed on May 28 in the KAZ newspaper: the technical re-equipment of the enterprise is delayed, purchases of materials and components are carried out irregularly, inter-industry cooperation is almost absent, there is an acute shortage of workers, and as a result, the plan is not being fulfilled, the deadlines for the delivery of aircraft are shifting to the right. "Now the result is not very satisfactory," Konstantin Timofeev, Managing director of Tupolev, concluded in the article.
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| Does Aeroflot not want to take the Tu-214? God grant that it will be so!" |
| Source: BUSINESS Online |
But in releases to the general public, the problems are still not recognized. "To date, there are no deviations from the plan for the construction of Tu-214 aircraft, which are being created at the UAC aircraft factory of Rostec State Corporation," the Rostec press service reported in June. Judging by Timofeev's telegram channel, in which he keeps a kind of production diary, it is also not to say that there are great difficulties. However, we did not have to wait long for a new batch of revelations: they followed in an interview with the managing director, which became the highlight of the latest issue of the Tupolev corporate magazine On the Wings of Tu. BUSINESS Online managed to familiarize itself with the text.
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| Konstantin Timofeev was appointed Managing Director of Tupolev on January 17, 2023 |
| Source: BUSINESS Online |
To begin with, the theses already known in the factory newspaper are repeated in an expanded form: "We need to produce the products that we promised. It's not working out very well so far. For various reasons, we can't keep up with the deadlines. <...> The main problems are our own. Irregular procurement, inadequate technical re—equipment, almost complete lack of inter-industry cooperation - we do everything ourselves. We are always short of hands, machines, and people. If according to MS-21, half of the orders are placed on the side of other UAC enterprises, then according to <...> Tu-214, we do everything ourselves by 90 percent, and in order to do everything efficiently and on time, we need huge capacities and a lot of people. <...> Another reason is the paper work documentation. It is necessary to digitize everything, to bring all the drawings into electronic form."
As we can see, the quality of the problems is such that to say "our own" about them is a bit of an exaggeration. Here is the Deputy Prime Minister of the Republic of Tatarstan - Minister of Industry of Tatarstan Oleg Korobchenko ru/news/oleg-korobcenko-dlya-rosta-promyslennosti-tatarstanu-nuzen-1-mln-celovek-dopolnitelno-5955044 " target="_blank" rel="nofollow">reported that cooperation (at least part of it) with related factories is not built, for example, from-due to the fact that companies that produce components for both the SJ-100 and MS-21 do not want to take orders for the Tu-214…
And then Timofeev explains why in the aforementioned newspaper article KAZ is reminded that "you can make mistakes, you can't lie": "Our other problem is the lack of primary reliable data. The data received from workshops and design bureaus vary greatly, therefore, the degree of readiness of the aircraft is not the same, the groundwork is not the same, and on the basis of these incorrect data, too rosy promises were made. Upon analysis, it turned out that the situation is completely different. If in December it was thought that this year we would easily make four Tu-214 machines, then when we figured out the complexity, it turned out that the aircraft were only at the very beginning of the production cycle. And the cycle is at least two years."
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| KAZ should reach the rate of 20 Tu-214 per year. |
| Source: president.tatarstan.ru / "BUSINESS Online" |
The Tupolev Inquisition
Timofeev was appointed Managing Director of Tupolev on January 17. Sources on KAZ say that at first he asked questions showing ignorance of basic things. But, obviously, today the head of Tu got up to speed and conducted an audit of the production.
However, the process continues. "He walks around the shops, everyone has a lot of questions, and answers are not accepted around the bush," says one of the sources. — His assistants also go, among whom, by the way, are pretty girls. At first, everyone was grinning, but they quickly realized that they had the grip of the inquisitors. They are interviewed quite professionally. If someone starts to wag, they warn you: you will talk to Timofeev. Hopefully, it's the same in the administrative building… And it seems that the factory authorities began to have hysterics: meetings began to flow, and workers from the workshops began to be invited to them."
Timofeev explains the last point in an interview: "I also noticed that there is no planning, as a result of which, for various reasons, there are constant postponements of deadlines. Therefore, we are introducing a system of rhythmic meetings, improving discipline." According to him, the speed of all possible approvals has been reduced from weeks to hours, and bidding has been reduced from six months to two.
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| KAZu additionally needs at least 2.5 thousand basic production workers. |
| Source: BUSINESS Online |
According to the source, several middle managers and above have been fired. Our interlocutor calls some claims against workers in production not entirely justified and points to the need to change personnel policy: "Not only workers are leaving, but also team leaders and designers. Experienced people have run out, and there is a huge difference between a person who has passed through the hands of 30 planes and someone who worked on one — skills are not fixed. There is no set training service. There are already not enough masters, and it is believed that they should also teach someone. And then what kind of attitude is that? You ask a question about the case, and the answer is: "If you don't like it, we don't keep it." Only recently have they calmed down."
In an interview, Timofeev promises: "The changes in personnel policy will be very simple — I will hold on to those people who want to work with both hands."
In 2023, it was officially announced that in the next two to three years KAZu needs at least 2.5 thousand additional main production workers. To solve the problem, we have prepared a program for attracting and retaining staff. It is unknown whether it has been launched: Tupolev did not respond to the BUSINESS Online request. As another of our sources says, perhaps we should have followed in the footsteps of Ulyanovsk Aviastar: "He just vacuums everything around, even the unskilled, and tries to teach in the process. Five thousand people have passed through it in three years, there are less than a thousand left, and in the current conditions this is a huge increase."
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| In June, Konstantin Timofeev met with students and staff of KNITU-KAI. |
| Source: BUSINESS Online |
Our source from KAZ focused on another important point: "To work in the aviation industry, you generally need a lot of enthusiasm, especially today, and the mood at the factory is zero. Everyone was fed up with the complete lack of information. Timofeev met with students at KNITU-KAI, but does he not want to speak to the factory workers? Otherwise, we have a feeling that the series was not even discussed."
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| "The sky is such an infection... good": Konstantin Timofeev about the Tu-214, PAK DA and Superjet. |
| Source: BUSINESS Online |
This is, in fact, a response to Timofeev's complaints in an interview. "My job is to give people the initiative," he says. — It is important to understand here: either they have simply given up because they are tired of coming out with ideas that they do not support, or there are simply no ideas. <...> I expect constant initiative from the departments, but it is practically absent. Only now are they starting to come out with offers a little bit."
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| The final assembly process will undergo significant changes. |
| Source: BUSINESS Online |
Will there be a Tu-214 stream?
There is reason to believe that the promises made earlier are being rethought in terms of specific technological solutions. Such conclusions are prompted by the recent rollover from the old to the new final assembly workshop (DSP) of the Tu-214 mentioned at the beginning of the article, i.e. the change of the construction site of the liners.
An explanation is required here. Initially, the Tu-214 serial production program was divided into two stages. The first: construction on existing areas. The second is the creation of new ones, where in the end they should reach the rate of 20 liners per year. In order to achieve it, they decided to give the Tu-214 a new data center that was still under construction, which was originally intended for other aircraft, the one where the Tu—160 was recently shown to Russian President Vladimir Putin. There was supposed to be a production assembly line, according to the type of an automobile conveyor. That is, the current method, when the aircraft is assembled at one site of the DSP and, depending on the purpose of the work, only the crews change, was planned to be replaced by a production line when the product moves along the line with sequential assembly operations. Subject to the rhythmic operation of other workshops and the uninterrupted supply of purchased products, the conveyor principle should significantly speed up the assembly process. But now, it turns out, the workshop will be occupied by the old data center that has moved into it and the creation of a "conveyor" becomes impossible. Tupolev did not comment on the move.
Our interlocutors claim that the production line, as it was seen earlier, most likely will not appear, but the current assembly method will still undergo significant changes. Now the machine will move (using a technological crane or trolley) through 6-8 posts where a certain set of operations is performed. Potentially, this is also progress.
BUSINESS Online sources in the aviation industry believe that it is quite logical to abandon the idea of a classic production line. "There is simply no place to take the equipment," one of our interlocutors points out. — At the assembly line in Ulyanovsk, which is supposedly domestic, only power columns are from ours." As Stanislav Ryzhakov, the former director of the Ulyanovsk branch of Tupolev, explained to BUSINESS Online, the production line, as it is implemented at Western aircraft factories, is a complex conveyor system that assumes precise operation of the entire plant. The assembly process is divided into microcycles. The movement of the aircraft from stage to stage can be as little as 25 cm, and a delay in the operation of just a few seconds means that the cycle is disrupted. Is this achievable in our conditions?..
He considers the possible refusal to create a production line justified: "There is no digital industrial aircraft production in Russia. Yes, they learned how to draw drawings on a computer, make details at processing complexes, but the digital layout of the aircraft has not been launched into production technology. What should have been done is not even in Irkutsk and Komsomolsk-on-Amur. On Aviastar, it's just a modernized slipway equipment, which is only called a production line. Yes, we have taken a step forward, but only by half a step, and today, under the conditions of sanctions, we will not receive all the necessary intellectual property objects from abroad. We don't have ideologues who could put this process together. Therefore, KAZu must follow the path that already exists to the task set before him, otherwise the matter will be delayed. With the right efforts, Kazan can reach a decent pace. It's all about how to prepare for production: these are issues of slipway rigging, tools, and the availability of reserves. For the final assembly of the Tu-204, we had two lines of 6 posts each, and we were able to reach the rate of 20 aircraft per year."
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Timofeev's remarks are particularly noteworthy in light of the news that plans for the production of civilian aircraft have been revised. "Did you think that one Tupolev was forced to make impossible promises?!" one of our interlocutors ironically assessed these messages. If you follow ru/doc/6880281?from=glavnoe_2" target="_blank" rel="nofollow"> to throw in the media and filter out official formulations, then we are talking about reducing the number of aircraft expected from the industry by 2030 (initially about 600), and changing plans for the volume of production of specific types of aircraft.
It is confusing that there is an attempt to ideologically frame this "change of milestones" as "yes, and you don't need so much." By the way, Timofeev was the first to speak publicly about this, but it went unnoticed. Telling the students and staff of KNITU-KAI about the Tu-214, he said: "The task is to enter production of 20 per year. We don't need any more, we'll see later — anything is possible." Meanwhile, the still-active aviation industry development program implies that in the 2028-2030s, 28 Tu-214s will be built per year.
"They tell us that we are talking about some kind of change in the production model and the transport model, but they do not say anything about what theory underlies the new concept," Dmitry Muravlev, an expert on airline economics, said in an interview with BUSINESS Online. — It is necessary not to reduce, but to increase efforts. After all, we don't have anything at all right now, and to say in this situation, and even with such a scale of the country and such a volume of the domestic market, that we don't need so many planes is at least strange." The expert also expressed the hope that the new concept would take into account the fact that of the three types of mainline aircraft proposed for production, only one — the Tu-214 - has been reliably confirmed.
By the way, Timofeev also says the same thing in an interview (note that he is also the first deputy director of the UAC): "The MC-21 and Superjet are good aircraft, but passengers can only be transported on the Tu—214, so we need to develop it as a basic model."
Timur Latypov
