Digital adoption vital for future mining success – EY
As productivity remains the number one operational risk in the mining sector, future digital transformation in the mining and metals sector will be a critical enabler to addressing the industry’s productivity and margin challenges, states professional services firm EY.
EY Africa mining and metals leader Wim Hoogedeure says, that through adequate use of digital, coupled with a manufacturing mindset, which focuses on productivity across the entire end-to-end operation, mining companies can better manage variability and improve productivity.
This follows the recent release of EY’s global report, ‘The digital disconnect: problem or pathway?’, in which 31% of 700 global respondents in the sector said that digital was high on the agenda for their organisation, while 15% said it was not on the agenda at all.
“Using digital to navigate productivity transformation should start with clarity of purpose and understanding where it will create value. The next step to developing an overarching, integrated three- to five-year roadmap of digital initiatives, that are margin accretive, is understanding what that requires in terms of governance, leadership, culture, capacity, capability and digital process maturity,” Hoogedeure elaborates.
He comments that digital can enable new ways to drive productivity, manage the variability challenges of the sector and pursue commercial excellence. There are a number of examples of what mining and metals companies can achieve with the right focus.
This includes optimising plans and productivity rates across any operation and managing variability under any conditions. Hoogedeure comments that digital will enable this by combining detailed orebody data with equipment operational and maintenance data in a real-time environment to produce alternative operating plans and enable the refining of these plans for variability.
He notes that, by adopting digital, mining and metals companies can enhance their asset availability and reliability. Hoogedeure says that a move to digitally enabled predictive maintenance would allow for the extension of maintenance windows, reduced component and labour costs and the minimisation of costly breakdown events.
Further, he highlights that, once the effective maintenance practices are standardised, the introduction of robotic process automation and schedule optimisation tools is possible.
Hoogedeure notes that digital adoption assists companies in understanding true end-to-end capability and systems bottlenecks and supports loss elimination. “This is fundamental to the manufacturing excellence mindset,” he asserts.
Hoogedeure highlights that digital can assist in increasing agility and responsiveness to changes in market factors, such as freight rates and customers’ buying behaviour trends. He says that this would optimise shipping and scheduling to reduce demurrage, maximise port use and also enable miners to capture spot markets and price premiums through sales contracted at different points of the value chain.
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