Your warehouse is closer to the point – Newspaper Kommersant No. 33 (7478) dated 02/27/2023

Over the past year, the rhetoric of isolationism in Russia in response to anti-Russian sanctions by much of the world economy seems to have begun to drown out in the public field the truth that global cooperation improves the efficiency of national economies. However, in practice it turns out that the government itself is interested in expanding global cooperation. In this sense, the experience of the national project to increase labor productivity is noteworthy – this mechanism is valued by the authorities for tangible effects without large investments. Thus, experts from federal and regional competence centers help enterprises put into practice simple ideas of lean production (adjust systems for accounting, storage of raw materials and materials, personnel relocation). As experience shows, this allows enterprises to save on the usual processes and invest the released funds in the expansion of production. Because of the sanctions, this mechanism for searching for internal reserves for investment has become even more in demand.

However, at a recent EAEU workshop on improving labor productivity, it was found that the standard practices of lean manufacturing, which made it possible to significantly increase its efficiency, turned out to be inapplicable to the new Russian reality – in terms of reducing excess inventory. Maria Glukhova, vice-president of the RSPP, who was present at the seminar, said that under the conditions of sanctions, manufacturers, on the contrary, prefer to stock up raw materials, materials and components, and the presence of such stocks makes it easier for enterprises to adapt to sanctions. The Ministry of Economy explains to Kommersant that the decision on tools to increase labor productivity is selected by experts together with enterprises, but they note the importance of learning practices for optimal resource and inventory management – they will come in handy after establishing new supply chains. This moment, however, is successfully postponed by tightening the regime of secondary sanctions and the elimination of loopholes by Western countries for circumventing them.

As a result, the limits of optimization of internal processes and equally the efficiency of Russian companies are noticeably reduced. And import substitution is unlikely to solve the problem, because the question of who should store excess stocks will have two answers: a Russian supplier or a Russian buyer. In global supply chains, this load is compensated by the presence of alternative supply participants, but the capacity of the Russian market is incomparable with the world market. However, the idea of ​​the Russian authorities to expand the experience of the national project to the EAEU countries and transfer the production of necessary products to them (see Kommersant on February 17) looks like a logical attempt to distribute these risks and increase the limits of efficiency.