Off-Site Meeting of the Samara Region Directors Club at JSC «Progress» — May 22, 2026

Brief and Personal opinion

On May 22, representatives of the business community gathered at the JSC «Progress» facility in Samara. We listened to 6 reports on the work completed and key achievements. Such meetings are valuable because they allow people to openly discuss the real difficulties and challenges faced during operations.

Interesting fact: the cost of launching 1 kg of payload into space is 350,000 rubles.

I acted as an opponent on the topic of production digitalization for Konstantin Sterlikov. For obvious reasons, I will deliberately omit the names of specific systems and software.

Personal assessment: 5 out of 10.

This score is due to serious potential risks that are, unfortunately, very likely in the current environment. One can only envy the scale of the work done — it is truly titanic. In pre-sanctions conditions, I would confidently give it a 10 out of 10. It was one of the strongest implementations in the industry.

Weak points:

• Import substitution is only at 15%. While it’s understandable that specialized CAD/CAM systems have almost no equivalents in the world, for network infrastructure there are quite decent domestic solutions (for example, zVirt).
• The core of the Unified Information Space is built on a foreign system whose developer has stopped supporting Russian clients. What happens if it simply stops working? What is the alternative, and what is the migration timeline?
• Critical hardware is of foreign origin. One of the major GPU manufacturers has been banned from exporting to Russia since 2022. How do they plan to maintain and expand the cluster when the equipment starts failing?
• There is no Roadmap.

Despite the impressive scale, without a clear roadmap this is not a strategy — it’s working in the dark. That said, I repeat: this remains one of the strongest (if not the strongest) projects presented at the event. However, current realities require honest answers and serious work.

Detailed and Official Version

The off-site meeting of the Samara Region Directors Club was held at JSC«Progress»! On May 22, representatives of the business community gathered at the site of the legendary enterprise to exchange experience and discuss development issues as part of the “Innovative Leaders of Samara Region” competition. The meeting opened with congratulations to the entire team of JSC «Progress» on the successful launch of the Soyuz-5 carrier rocket — a significant event in the history of Russian cosmonautics and the result of the dedicated work of the entire enterprise. The program included six reports:

Leonid Mikhaylenko, First Deputy General Director — prospects for the development of the production complex Alexander Egorov, Head of the Innovative Development Department — scientific intensity of the company’s products Denis Tsarev — implementation of  lean manufacturing principles Mukhtar Mannanov — strategy for developing the marketing ecosystem Konstantin Sterlikov — digitalization of production Pavel Zdobnov — HR policy of the enterprise

Each report was followed by questions from opponents and active discussion. The competition commission highly appreciated the technological maturity of the enterprise, highlighting:

Rocket and space leadership (2,000+ launches, 1,006 spacecraft, reliability 0.985+) Lean production (164 lean projects, 5S system) Strategic planning (roadmap until 2028+ and Strategy 360°)