UrBC, Yekaterinburg, October 23, 2015. Sverdlovsk Region-based companies are planning to make 5,109 people redundant (as of October 21,2015), Sverdlovsk Region Labor & Employment Department’s report states. These companies are: Rostelecom (320 people), Litoy Element VSMZ in Verkhnyaya Sinyachikha (226 people), Verkhniy Tagil Power Station (262 people). So far, 10,000 locals have already lost their jobs, and only 3,865 people have been able to find a new one. The largest-scale layoffs were registered in ESK Energomost in Yekaterinburg (444 people), Novaya Lyalya Pulp Plant (749 people),

UrBC, Yekaterinburg, October 23, 2015. Yekaterinburg existing home prices dropped by 5.6% compared with the start of the year and by 6.2% compared with February, Ural Real Estate Chamber reports. As of October 19, 2015, the average asking price of a square meter of an existing home in Yekaterinburg came to 71,957 RUR. The market supply is still at its peak: potential customers can choose from 11,600 apartments and 1,900 rooms in communal apartments in the chamber’s database. The supply of two-bedroom apartments has gone by 22% since the start of the year, that of one-bedrooms ones by 37%, and

UrBC, Yekaterinburg, October 23, 2015. Seversky Pipe Plant (a member enterprise of OAO TMK) is hosting a show by the U.S.-based Eli Yamin Blues Band, TMK press service reports. The band comprises four virtuoso musicians whose blues took away the breath of listeners in America, China, Mali, Japan, and Europe’s best concert halls. The CC Machine Blues Show is dedicated to the one year since the launch of the company’s new FQM mill, commissioned by Russian Prime Minister Dmitri Medvedev in October 2014. The machine reached its projected capacity and made 37,000,000 kg of pipes in the course of

UrBC, Yekaterinburg, October 23, 2015. LEPSE (a member enterprise of Ural Vagon Zavod Corporation) got its metrological lab certified for ensuring the uniformity of measurements; the approval certificates are not limited in time, the company press service reports. Following the submission of all the papers (a certification application, the lab’s quality control manual, certificates for standards of units, and data relating to the measuring rooms and the lab workers who do the measurements), LEPSE was visited by Rosakkreditatsiya committee in September. The committee found the lab’s

UrBC, Yekaterinburg, October 23, 2015. Uraltransmash hosted a meeting of Ural Vagon Zavod Corporation’s member enterprises on launch of lean production. According to the corporation’s press service, experts from Yekaterinburg, Rubtsovsk, Nizhniy Tagil, Tomsk, Chelyabinsk, and Kamensk Uralsky who supervise the introduction of the 5S system to their respective plants shared their experience and action plans. The principles of lean production have been integrated into the corporation’s member enterprises for a few years now, so there is certain experience to share, some results to look at, and