Improving labour productivity at Kazan Helicopters
Two strategic directions are being pursued at the Kazan Helicopters to improve the company’s efficiency and labour productivity. The first one is the development of process control technologies. The second one is the development of production technologies. Systemic work to implement process control technologies began as early as 2010-2011. Back then, the company started testing Lean production tools within a pilot project to implement them in the tail section of the main rotor blades. Subsequently, these undertakings expanded into a full-fledged project to develop the production system for the entire blade production in accordance with Lean principles. The project lasted about a year and resulted in a significant economic effect amounting to about RUB 45 million.
The plant is carrying out a large-scale upgrade of its production facilities, and has already invested more than RUB 11 billion in retrofitting. In doing this, production under new technologies and on new premises is organised with the use of tools for analysis and construction of optimal flows. Only such joint implementation of new process control and production technologies gives the best synergetic effect.
In 2019, Kazan Helicopters of the Russian Helicopters Holding was among the enterprises in Tatarstan that launched the Labour Productivity and Employment Support national project. At the plant, together with FCC, labour productivity was improved at the project of Production of Composite Blades for Mi-38/Mi-171A2.