Schneider Electric South Africa, a specialist in energy management, has announced the release of StruxureWare for Mining, Minerals and Metals, a comprehensive suite of applications, which optimises production operations to reduce costs and improve sustainability within the mining, minerals and metals operation. This is the newest addition to Schneider Electric’s innovative StruxureWare software, the company’s platform of integrated software applications designed to help customers maximise business performance and be more efficient and sustainable.

The new StruxureWare suite integrates process control, operations management and energy management within the mining, minerals and metals operation to allow customers to gain actionableinsight into their entire operation. With the ability to manage and analysedata generated in real-time, customers are able to reduce operation costs and waste and increase safety, while monitoring their energy usage. The software also provides supply chain benefits by optimising plans and scheduling, identifying risks and deviations, and pinpointing inefficiencies.

“The StruxureWare for Mining, Minerals and Metals suite is a breakthrough in how we’ve typically managed operations – making it more efficient from the resource to market. This is especially valuable as mining, minerals and metals are some of the most energy-intensive industrial processes, making energy efficiency a crucial part of the operation, from both a financial and sustainability standpoint,” says Wilhelm Swart, vice president for the Industry Business and Mining Minerals & Metals Cluster end user business group at Schneider Electric South Africa.

Benefits include:

Reduces energy consumption by 30 percent: The new StruxureWare suite increases energy efficiency by combining energy and production data to allow operations and energy managers to work together, optimising operational demands and energy and water consumption to reduce costs. In addition, it provides visibility into enterprise and supply chain performance and analyses results over time to identify areas for improvement – maximising the return on precious resources in the volatile commodity market and increasing overall sustainability.

Maximises business performance: Additionally, insights gleaned from the software applications increase productivity by as much as 20 percent. The integrated software improves production operations to maximise asset performance. Asset performance gains allow mine production managers to conserve resources from the mine, to processing, to the end user.

Open and scalable solution: Completely open and scalable, the software expands as an operation grows, reducing total cost of ownership and allowing users to invest effectively in new technology for a competitive advantage. The “plug-and-play” design ensures a seamless integration of applications and the open architecture allows StruxureWare applications to work with virtually any software, hardware or system. 

The StruxureWare for Mining, Minerals and Metals suite consists of the following software applications:

• Resource Advisor: tracks and manages the enterprise’s energy and carbon costs;

• Energy Operation: transforms data into essential energy information and reduces operating cost;

• Plant Operation: combines energy and process data to get visibility into asset performance to identify areas for improvement;

• Supply Chain Operation: optimises the supply chain to maximise return on resources;

• Power Monitoring Expert: collects and organises data from the enterprise’s electrical network;

• PowerSCADA Expert: manages the power network based on telemetry systems that transformdata into useful information; and

• Process Expert: integrates application control and supervision into a single environment.