Oleksandr Yakovenko singled out chaotic production, which creates a zoo of products that are difficult to scale, dependence on Chinese components, and the lack of a culture of serial production.
Oleksandr Yakovenko singled out chaotic production, which creates a zoo of products that are difficult to scale, dependence on Chinese components, and the lack of a culture of serial production.
Yakovenko calls one of the key challenges the inability of Ukrainian developers to move from prototypes to mass production.
“Our enemy is scaling its best solutions. We also have effective products, but most of them have not been able to go into series production. This is one of our main problems,” a dev.ua correspondent reports Yakovenko during the Kyiv International Economic Forum.
In the early stages, TAF produced everything it could without standardization and a single technical specification. According to Yakovenko, this created a “zoo” of components and hindered the development of system processes.
Another problem is total dependence on foreign components.
"About 90% of purchases for our UAVs are imports, mostly from China. Last year, our group of companies paid about $450 million to Chinese suppliers. And this is not the market as a whole, just us and our partners," Yakovenko clarifies.
Due to logistical complications, especially with exports from China, TAF Industries, along with other manufacturers, are trying to localize production in Ukraine. However, this is completely impossible due to the lack of raw materials — in particular, carbon and microchips.
Yakovenko also emphasizes the importance of quality control, which suffers due to constant shelling and the need to diversify production facilities.
He explains that the company is forced to split production across different locations — batteries in one place, drones in another. This makes quality control difficult, but it is essential to survive in a war.
"We are a laboratory country. We create prototypes perfectly, quickly test them in combat conditions. But we need to develop a managerial and operational culture to turn innovations into large-scale solutions," Yakovenko concluded.
Recall that in early August, TAF Drones, known for the production of Kolibri FPV drones, announced a rebranding to TAF Industries to emphasize its growth and increase production to 80,000 UAVs per month.
Among the latest innovations, TAF Industries announced the production of 10,000 automatic guidance modules for drones and work on "shaheed hunters."
