Russia: By 2024, the first stage of the project implementation should be completed, which includes R&D and phased production preparation.
The intelligent platform being developed by Key Systems and Components (KSC) Group will be designed for online control and monitoring of electrical equipment and related rolling stock systems with subsequent transfer to the server. The purpose of the technology is to provide the possibility of predictive detection of equipment malfunctions for proper time maintenance and ensuring a high level of rolling stock technical readiness. As noted in KSC, the development of such a system will allow to create a service for the interaction of manufacturers and operators of the railway rolling stock.
Production of electrical equipment in KSC. Source: KSC
The project is being implemented by the KSC’s subsidiary, KSC Elkom, which is part of the Electronic and Electrical Components division. The total amount of investments in the project is estimated by KSC itself at more than 770 mln RUR (approx. $10 mln USD). The Russian state will support the project under the national program “Development of electronic and radio-electronic industry”: KSC will be compensated for part of the costs associated with the development of basic technologies for the priority electronic components and radio-electronic equipment production.
The anchor customer for the KSC’s components is Transmashholding (TMH): as of mid-2020, it accounted for almost 85% of KSC’s orders. TMH is currently implementing several large contracts for the locomotive-hauled passenger coaches supply: 3.7 thsd units to the Federal Passenger Company (FPC, part of Russian Railways) for 237 bln RUR (about $3.7 bln USD) and 1.3 thsd units for the Egyptian National Railways for more than €1 bln. As TMH CEO Kirill Lipa noted at the Gaidar Forum in early January, the Russian manufacturer currently is also participating in a number of tenders for the passenger coaches supply in EU.
Production of electrical equipment in KSC. Source: KSC
At the same time, KSC seeks to diversify its customer pool. In 2020, in an interview with Railway Equipment Journal, KSC CEO Taras Spivak said that the company’s strategy involves increasing the share of supplies to other customers up to 50% within a few years, including attracting clients from other areas than the railway market.
At the moment, KSC Elcom employs more than 170 people, and in the KSC’s Electronic and Electrical Components division, as of 2021, a total of 450 people were employed while its production areas within the KSC technopark in the Tver region amounted to about 15,000 sq. m. The division’s plan for 2022 assumes receipt of 10 bln RUR ($136 mln USD) revenue (actual revenue in 2020 – 7.3 bln RUR or $101 mln USD). One of the perspective projects of the division is a “model coach”, which should allow approbation and testing of newly developed technologies within the production site. As Dmitry Zhukov, head of the division, said in an interview with the KSC’s corporate magazine in October last year, the division has its own design team of 39 people, which is engaged in the development and engineering of new products in the field of electronics.
