Iskaliev Yerkhat Serikovich

The COVID-19 pandemic, which covered the whole world, influenced not only the lives of hundreds of people, but also the situation in local and global markets. The significant reduction in production capacity due to the closure of borders between countries and the introduction of self-isolation has made a major change in the logistics industry.

I would like to highlight the main trends in the industry, which we are now tracing. Namely, we are witnessing changes in the nonprofit sector, consumer demands have changed. We are witnessing some individualization and departure from mass.

At the same time, the issue of speed and uninterrupted transportation is becoming more and more important. Every year the competitiveness of transport companies grows in the market. Since the client primarily relies on his individual preferences, he pays special attention to timing and convenience. As a result, brands with the last mile have appeared.

Another big trend is unmanned transport management. A cold chain has appeared. This type of uninterrupted supply is a whole science. We have a shortage of specialists in this field.

There are several main reasons for the weak development of the industry:

• As you call it, Kazakhstan is landlocked, so we are at the bottom of the world ratings.
• There is a lot of wear and tear on both railway transport and motor vehicles.
• And thirdly, our country itself does not generate much cargo. Domestic transportation is almost unprofitable, because of the long routes, difficult terrain, small population, etc.

We need to introduce containerization, supply management, develop soft infrastructure, automation, all this will be within the framework of digitalization. In general, I would like to emphasize that logistics is not transport, transport is just a logistics tool. The main thing in the industry is personnel. As in many sectors of the economy, the knowledge and the staff are unfortunately outdated.

Universities also need to update their teaching methodology and curriculum base. The knowledge that the staff receives must meet today's challenges. There should be a direct link between global players, industry and universities. As the demand for personnel will only grow. We need to apply pragmatism. There is a huge layer of areas in the country that need to update personnel and knowledge, for example the Caspian Sea and Khorgos.

I consider it necessary to widely apply foreign experience. First of all, it is necessary to start with introduction of new standards. As long as we have old standards, everything will be outdated. Such instruments will help to raise the international transit potential of Kazakhstan. To do this, we need to look at the experience of foreign colleagues as widely as possible, and not just rely on Russian standards.

Certainly, new professions related to automation will appear in the transport and logistics industry. As there is a shortage of representatives of technical specialties in the country. For example, in medicine there is equipment, a doctor uses it to a minimum, because he is not a technician and does not know all the capabilities of this device. Money is spent a lot on equipment, and the benefits are only 10% of 100.

According to my predictions, in 2050, automation of the logistics industry in the country will fully shift to artificial intelligence. Such an example is the experience of Japan. Hitachi has implemented a program with artificial intelligence, which, based on given parameters, manages warehouses and personnel. Such robotic managers can monitor the production process in real time. In addition, Artificial Intelligence finds ways to improve personnel efficiency. Of course, striving for such achievements is one of our priority tasks.