September 24, 2014. Uraltransmash (a member enterprise of Uralvagonzavod Corporation) coordinated a professional skills contest among quality control inspectors for the first time.

According to the corporation’s press service, the contest was unique in that only young workers under 35 years of age could join in the competition, since the contest was part of the company’s youth policy program.

Following a round of candidate selection, six people were chosen to compete and were put into two groups based on their qualification of a welding inspector or that of a machining inspector.

The contest was conducted in several stages and comprised both theoretical and practical tasks, which were group-specific.

During the theoretical part, contestants had to answer 20 multiple-choice questions centered around general theory and technical peculiarities. For example, they needed to name different kinds of quality control and indicate the set of documents an inspector needs to sign when checking a spare part’s quality. The technical questions had to do with the participants’ professional skills and were directed at determining how well the contestants can read drawings and technological processes as well as use measuring equipment.

‘The practical part was rather original. A few weeks prior to the contest, Uraltransmash organized professional skills contests for welders and turners. The contestants’ work underwent technical control procedures. Reliable measurement data were thus already available, so the competing quality inspectors were asked to do their own measurements, and the figures were then compared against one another,’ the press service says.