Steps One and Two on the Journey to Operational Stability

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This is Part Two in a three-part series on Mining Operational Stability, by Mark Bese, Natural Resources Senior Industry Marketing Manager. This series of posts will explore the concept of “Operational Stability”, based on industry research and conversations conducted by Mike MacFarlane, former Executive Vice President Strategy and Business Planning, AngloGold Ashanti. In Part One, we discussed Short Term Planning. Today, we’ll discuss the first two steps to operational stability. 

“You cannot get to a point of operational stability if your mine sites are being managed in the rearview mirror.”
 
— Mike MacFarlane 
former Executive Vice President Strategy and Business Planning 
AngloGold Ashanti

Step One: Set Your Strategic Vision and Lead from the Top

Getting to a point of operational stability involves a cultural change in the way the business is run. To ensure your organization arrives at the destination you set for it, you need to be the flight commander and provide the ground control system. Your flight plan, the vision, must be understood and acted upon by your pilots, the people who will execute it. The ground control systems, the supporting infrastructure, must be in place to help both you and your team navigate their way and monitor their progress.

Step Two: Move to a Lean Mining Business Process Model

Lean manufacturing is a proven approach to build a culture that drives Operational Stability; however, its principles need to be translated into mining language. To achieve this, it is critical you define and systemize your business processes. You must also collect data to track progress on task execution in-shift in real-time. 

The data you gather must be:

  • Accurate. Deploy automated collection and sensors wherever possible. There more data is touched by people, the more it gets corrupted.
  • Complete (holistic across the operation, within and processes).
  • Collected in real time.

Stayed tuned for Part Three of the Mining Operational Stability Series where we’ll examine the remaining steps. In the meantime, to learn more on this topic, download our free eBook “Six Steps to Operational Stability”. For more blog posts by Mark Bese, check out his series on Mining Execution Excellence.

 

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