The last of the aircraft factories built before the collapse of the USSR was the Ulyanovsk Aviation Plant. Designed to meet the needs of the production of huge An-124 aircraft and Tu-204 passenger liners, the enterprise can serve as a good illustration of what is happening in industry.
Short story
The construction of the plant on the left bank of the Volga in Ulyanovsk was started in 1976, and the first An-124 took off after 9 years. After another 5 years, the production of the Tu-204 was launched - this happened in August 1990, on the eve of a new period in the country's history. Then what happened was more or less characteristic of the entire industry. Transformation into a joint-stock company in 1992, actual bankruptcy and separation from the structure of aircraft production in order to save aircraft construction capacities. So, in 1996, Aviastar-SP CJSC appeared. The acronym JV here means “Aircraft Production”. A little later, the plant was transferred to the Tupolev control loop, then (after the creation of the UAC) - to the UAC, the last place of subordination is the directorate of transport aviation on the basis of Ilyushin PJSC.
What was produced and is being produced
The beginning of the Ulyanovsk Aviation Plant was very spectacular. At its peak, the factory employed over 36 thousand people. The vast majority of the Ruslanes flying today were gathered here. All Tu-204 of various modifications also left the gates of this enterprise. This serious backlog helped the plant to survive in difficult times, because all the produced machines needed to be serviced and supplied with the necessary spare parts. In parallel with this, the production of reversing devices for the PS-90 engine was mastered. Much later, after the collapse of orders for the Tu-204 and An-124, the Ulyanovsk Aviation Plant Aviastar-SP switched to organizing the production of other aircraft. In particular, the IL-76 MD-90A, a modification of the machine previously manufactured in Tashkent. A contract was signed for the serial supply of 39 of these machines for the needs of the Ministry of Defense. Its cost is about 140 billion rubles.
Around the same time, the Ulyanovsk Aviation Plant, whose products were additionally replenished with fuselage panels and individual units for other machines, was engaged in the installation of interiors on SSJ aircraft. Attempts to organize the release of additional products were unsuccessful. In general, the Ulyanovsk Aviation Plant producing pots and other consumer goods does not have. Based on the foregoing, it may seem that the plant is succeeding and bathed in money. But not everything is as great as it is often presented and presented.
Problems
Today, about 10 thousand people work at the Ulyanovsk Aviation Plant. The company has a solid social program, including the provision of housing for its employees and other benefits, by inertia, lasting from the past. However, there is a huge "but." For many years, the plant has not produced anything in series, that is, aircraft are not transferred to customers. The result is annual stable losses. To maintain the plant, and this is several billion rubles a year, loans are taken, advances, loans from parent organizations are obtained, and almost nothing but separate units is output.
Deliveries of ready-made aircraft are piece-wise, the territory is huge, the buildings of the plant are striking in their monumentality, repairs are being carried out, many people are involved in plant management, they have their own fleet of cars, their own airfield, and much more. The company is one of the leaders in the availability of modern machine tools. Therefore, there is a clear and egregious contradiction between the possibilities and the result.
People go to work every day, get paid twice a month, the rooms are heated, open house days are held, social programs are being implemented, there are mentors and mentors, but there are no finished products. The main project of the plant, the already mentioned contract for 39 cars, is practically frustrated. In less than 7 years, only 5 cars were transferred to the customer, another 3-5 are planned for delivery this year. Although similar promises were before. It is not surprising that today statements are made about the loss-making nature of the contract and the supposedly small price. Given the accumulated costs of maintaining the plant over many years, not a single contract and not a single price of the final product is able to make a profit at this rate of production.
Causes
The main reason for this state of affairs is to ignore the changing scale of the market and its demands. In the USSR, all aircraft factories were built on a full cycle. And the Ulyanovsk Aviation Plant has many manufactures. That is, at the factory entrance - materials, at the exit - finished aircraft. Factories occupy a gigantic area with corresponding overhead. The trouble is not so much in the “difficult legacy”, but in the fact that nothing has been done with this for two decades. There were many plans for optimization, but all of them remained on paper. The second reason is the washing out of frames. There is a generation gap when very young employees and people of retirement age work in high-tech industries. The middle generation is absent. Obviously not the worst qualified specialists left.
The situation now has a tendency to improve, but the problem remains. An eternal misfortune called “paternalism” is imposed on all this, when everyone is waiting for something, because they believe that they owe them. And all this completes - an endless series of building control loops and creating additional management mechanisms to influence production processes, which are taking their course at a very leisurely pace.