The mining and metallurgical group Metinvest is transforming its business processes through artificial intelligence (AI) by means of automation, the use of drones, and the application of these tools in the financial sector.
“In 2020, we were able to automate about 70% of processes, while 30% remained inaccessible due to technological limitations. Today, this figure has grown to 95%. This opens up completely new opportunities, and we are actively moving in this direction,” said Anton Ishchenko, head of the R&D product development team at Metinvest Digital, at the XIII Annual Forum of Financial Directors of Ukraine in Kyiv.
According to him, over five years of working with intelligent process automation, more than 500 solutions using various technologies have been implemented, which enabled the automation of about 200,000 work hours—equivalent to approximately 100 full-time employees.
He noted that modern intelligent automation at Metinvest is based on a combination of RPA (robotic process automation of routine operations), low-code platforms (rapid solution development without complex coding), Process and Task Mining (process analysis to identify inefficiencies), and AI (automation of complex tasks and real-time data processing).
One of the main innovations is the active involvement of employees in the automation process. At Metinvest, workers independently record their business processes and work activities using Task Mining, Power Automate, and SAP Scripts. This allows the formation of high-quality and structured automation requirements firsthand, reduces the burden on business analysts, and accelerates the transition from idea to finished solution. The collected data and processes are analyzed automatically with AI and then quickly transformed into working automated scenarios. Thus, time and resource expenditures for development and implementation decrease by tens of percent. Given limited business budgets, this approach has become critically important, Ishchenko emphasized.
The result of this practice is the creation of a corporate platform called Application Warehouse—a centralized repository of universal applications for automating typical business processes across various company divisions. This significantly increases the accessibility of digital tools: new solutions are rapidly implemented, spread among employees, and do not require development from scratch for each task. Currently, about a thousand employees use the platform.
“We continue to invest in research and development to create business value and remain among the leaders in digital transformation,” Ishchenko summarized.
Meanwhile, the group’s Chief Financial Officer Yuliia Dankova pointed to the comprehensive implementation of computer vision technologies and intelligent document processing in the company’s financial and production processes. According to her, modern computer vision-based solutions enable instant reading, analysis, and classification of documents from various sources—from scanners to corporate email—without the need for prior training.
Since 2023, Metinvest has been using its own intelligent document processing system, myOCR. The platform, which processes up to 40,000 pages of documents monthly, including confidential ones, has been implemented at seven large group enterprises. It saves about 20,000 hours of work annually and is integrated with a universal translator from foreign languages into Ukrainian. It contains modules for stamp and signature identification, contextual analysis, document classification, data verification, and extraction. The core of the system is based on advanced AI models.
“For example, when an enterprise imports from an Italian plant, the automated process accepts a package of documents in Italian and English, cross-checks them with accounting system data, creates and adds an authentic Ukrainian translation to the package, and transfers it to the electronic document storage system. For financial departments, this has become a real breakthrough in the speed and convenience of document flow,” the CFO noted.
She added that the company introduced a unified solution for computer vision systems called SPAIS. This system helps detect safety violations in production—for example, workers being in dangerous zones or without personal protective equipment. When a violation is detected, the programme alerts about it and stores the data in relevant systems. This solution is already used at several Ukrainian group enterprises. SPAIS also helps detect damages at Metinvest’s production facilities using drones.
Another computer vision system solution at Metinvest, which passed pilot testing and is being implemented for industrial use, is automatic quality control of slabs.
Dankova emphasized that the group’s assets operate solely on verified, uncompromised licensed systems. Priority technologies in this area include Microsoft solutions as well as in-house developments based on the Microsoft technology stack.
