OREANDA-NEWS.   A delegation of JSCo Russian Railways led by Valentin Gapanovich, Senior Vice-President for Innovation Development – Chief Engineer, accompanied by Ravil Zaripov, Minister of Industry and Trade of Tatarstan, visited KAMAZ.
The guests were welcomed by Irek Gumerov, Development Director, at KAMAZ. After negotiations on the further cooperation of RZD and KAMAZ, the delegation visited the Automobile Plant, R&D Centre and NP KAMAZ-Avtosport – the headquarters of the KAMAZ-master team. Besides, the guests saw such vehicles as KAMAZ-5490, KAMAZ-65206, KAMAZ-43118 in KAMAZ’s test area. They were also shown military vehicles of Mustang, Typhoon lines and legendary sports trucks of the KAMAZ-master team.
KAMAZ and RZD have been cooperating for a long time, and Valentin Gapanovich is a frequent visitor of the Kama automobile plant. As far back as 2004, he told that RZD wanted to equip its railroad trains with Euro 3 KAMAZ engines. Russian Railways was also interested in large-scale foundry, especially in potential of KAMAZ’s Metallurgical Complex which included the Forge Plant and the Foundry. At that time, a protocol was signed to detail a comprehensive program of the parties’ cooperation in different areas, and, as a result, KAMAZ got another large corporate client.
During ten years, the companies strengthened their partnership in many areas, including lean production. Thus, last year in Naberezhnye Chelny, OJSC KAMAZ, JSCo Russian Railways and OAO Severstal signed a tripartite agreement on cooperation valid till 2015. The decision on its conclusion was taken after the successful implementation of the project “Creation of the standard procurement control system” based on the conception of “pull production” when output volume and term depend on demand at succeeding nodes (as a result – on consumed demand). KAMAZ’s production areas and offices were visited by more than 125 representatives of RZD and Severstal. They studied the company’s rich experience in lean production, and Gapanovich expressed satisfaction with the results of the project.