Abstract <p>The paper presents the history of the autowave model for localized plastic flow developed at the ISPMS SB RAS and describes the fundamentals of the autowave approach to the problem of inhomogeneous plastic flow based on the idea of plastic flow localization. Attention is drawn to the historical aspect of the development of new ideas about the phenomenon of plasticity. The main relations of the autowave plasticity model (conformity principle, elastoplastic and mass invariants of plastic strain) are given, and its technical applications are considered. The two-component model is used to develop the theory of inhomogeneous plastic flow, taking into account the correlated (collective) properties of ensembles of deformation carriers. It is shown that solutions of the obtained equations describe patterns observed at all stages of strain hardening.</p>