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Soviet Union [USSR] The Planning and Investment Process of the Machine-Building and Metal-Working Complex
The Twelfth Five-Year Plan (1986-90) called for drastic
production increases in the sectors prioducing instruments, machine
tools, electrical equipment, chemical, and agricultural machines.
Fundamental investment changes were expected to raise machine
production to new highs. Overall investment in the machine-industry
was to be 80 percent higher than in the Eleventh Five-Year Plan
(1981-85). A crucial goal was to shorten the time between research
breakthroughs and their industrial application, which had been a
chronic bottleneck in the modernization of industry. Another goal
of the Twelfth Five-Year Plan was to improve the quality of
individual components and spare parts because their short service
life was diverting too much metal to making replacement parts. In
the mid-1980s, however, severe delivery delays continued for both
spare parts and new machines ordered by various industries.
Perestroika attempted to simplify the system and to fix
responsibility for delays. As the largest consumer of steel in the
country, MBMW had felt the impact of severe production problems in
the metallurgy industry
(see Soviet Union USSR - Metallurgy
, this ch.). Automation was
expected to add speed and precision to production lines. By 1987
nearly half of metal-cutting machine production was done with
digital program control. New control complexes stressed
microcomputers with high production capacity and low material
requirements. Nevertheless, a 1987 Soviet study showed that 40
percent of the robots in machine plants were not working at all,
and a 1986 study demonstrated that only 20 percent of the robots
were providing the expected production advantages. A long-term
(through the year 2000) cooperative program with the other members
of the Council for Mutual Economic Assistance (Comecon) was
expected to contribute new ideas for streamlining the Soviet
machine-building industry
(see Soviet Union USSR - Appendix B).
Data as of May 1989
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