The Role of Digital Twins in Company Development Discussed at a Panel Session of the KIOSH Forum

As part of the KIOSH 2024 forum — one of the first forums in Kazakhstan dedicated to occupational health and industrial safety — a session titled “Digital Twins in Industry: Digital Industrial Safety as a New ESG Trend” was held. The session was moderated by Yuliya Yakupbayeva, co-founder of the ESG Club and partner at GPI Group.

In an active discussion format, speakers addressed the following questions:

• How does digitalization support the development of industrial safety?
• Successful and unsuccessful examples of digital transformation at Kazakhstani enterprises;
• How to use IT technologies in training industrial safety personnel;
• What mistakes do companies and teams make when implementing digital solutions;
• What future lies ahead for digital industrial safety in Kazakhstan.

“Digitalization is an important tool for sustainable development, and it is very encouraging that digitalization is deepening — moving from a merely declarative presence within companies to becoming a genuine tool for management, control, and analytics, and is already beginning to serve and accelerate business. AI is already integrated into production processes, monitors safety at enterprises, forecasts consequences, and more,” noted Yuliya Yakupbayeva, partner at GPI Group.

“By using a digital twin in our project focused on ensuring the safe transportation of our clients, we have seen accident rates drop several times over. The basis of the solution is a systemic approach — we monitor all criteria that could potentially lead to an accident, scale them, and prevent incidents before they occur,” noted Yuri Visnevsky, General Director of STM LLP and founder of SKAI.

Speakers highlighted a number of existing challenges:

First, there is often no integration between IT solutions and data sources, meaning data must be entered manually — which naturally raises questions about data quality.

Second, in the early stages, the digitalization journey is often accompanied by skepticism, and even resistance, from middle management.

Third, a major issue is the knowledge gap between project teams and top management.

Nevertheless, digital twins and AI represent an undeniably growing trend that businesses are already adopting — and those who haven’t yet are already thinking about it.

Thank you to all the speakers for the engaging discussion!

Speakers at the session included: Yerik Shortanbayev — General Director of SKYMAX Technologies Group of Companies; Abai Mustafin — Managing Director for IT at GPI Group; Nikolai Larionov — Project Manager, “Risk Management in Industry,” Kazzinc LLP; Elena Khaertdinova — Executive Director, Business Information Systems Group of Companies; and Yuri Visnevsky — Co-founder of the Safe Driving Association, CEO of SKAI (Safety Keeper Artificial Intelligence).