Amur State University hosted the qualifying stage of the CASE-IN championship

On April 17, Amur State University hosted the qualifying stage of the Petrochemistry Student League for the second time. The International Engineering Championship CASE IN. The partner of the event was SIBUR.

The CASE-IN Championship is an international competition system for solving engineering cases among schoolchildren, students and young professionals. The purpose of the championship is to popularize engineering and technical education and attract the most promising young specialists in the fuel and energy, petrochemical and mineral resources industries. In 2019, "Digital Transformation" became a common theme for all the leagues of the championship.

Eight teams decided to demonstrate their knowledge and skills in solving cases – practical tasks based on the situation in production as close to reality as possible. They included 30 students of engineering, physics and Economics faculties. To generate an idea, the participants had to apply all their theoretical knowledge, professional experience, and technical and economic calculation skills.

– It is engineering education that is the locomotive that promotes the economy of all countries of the world, and the base that allows the development of the entire human civilization. And in order to realize all the prospects and opportunities of our region, we need to have young, advanced specialists who are able to solve important production tasks in a non-trivial way, have creative thinking, and are able to systematically and commandably address technological and production issues that arise during design, construction, and operation. The CASE-IN championship is aimed at implementing these skills," said Natalia Savina, Acting Rector of Amur State University.

10 days before the qualifying stage, the students received a case study on Digital Solutions and Production Efficiency, dedicated to SIBUR's Tobolsk enterprise.

– The city of Tobolsk is home to one of the world's largest petrochemical plants, and the case that the contestants are invited to solve is from there. What is written in the case is real information, and employees of the company have to solve such tasks almost daily and at the same time, in a similar form, defend their decisions to the management. Thus, students who solve a case can go through a full cycle of analysis and solving a real production problem in the form in which it occurs in modern companies," said Andrey Polyuliakh, director of SIBUR's structural division in Blagoveshchensk.

On April 17, the teams had to present their decision to the members of the jury – teachers of Amur State University, representatives of SIBUR and other industry experts. The experts evaluated the performances of the teams according to six criteria: technology, economics, originality and novelty of the solution (innovation), presentation and performance, energy efficiency, completeness of answers to questions.

As a result, the ECO team took the third place, and the DFM team took the second. The first place was won by the New Element team – Valeria Pastukhova, Valentina Karpenko, Oksana German and Anna Bondarenko.

 – We were solving a case, the topic of which was "The introduction of digitalization 4.0 into the production processes of SIBUR-Tobolsk." It was necessary to analyze the case data – two technological schemes: dehydrogenation of propane and production of polypropylene. We also needed to understand what digital transformation 4.0 is, what its key points can be implemented in these schemes, and what it will do. On the first day, we carefully read the case, then we brainstormed and looked for ways to solve the case using various sources," the participants told about their work.

The girls participated in the "CASE-IN" last year, but in different teams. This year we decided to team up and significantly improved our last year's result, becoming the leaders of the regional qualifying stage. They will represent Amur University in the final of the CASE-IN, which will be held in Moscow on May 30-31.