Steps Three to Six on the Journey to Operational Stability

This is the final post in a three-part series on Mining Operational Stability. This series explores the concept of “Operational Stability”, based on industry research and conversations. In Part One, we discussed Short Term Planning. Part Two discussed the first two steps to operational stability. Today, we’ll conclude the series by showcasing Steps Three to Six.

“You can align everyone in your business to your strategic vision by ensuring information and measures flow to the top of your organization.r.”

— Mike MacFarlane
former Executive Vice President Strategy and Business Planning
AngloGold Ashanti

Step Three: Adopt ISA-95 Architecture

Do what manufacturing does to drive visibility into productivity in its operations: Adopt ISA-95 Architecture. Putting an automated interface between enterprise and operational control systems will help align the organization to your vision. It is also the foundation for gathering data and making it actionable from the rock face to the boardroom.

Establish a five-level flow of information through the organization.
Aggregate the data you collect.
Implement a Mining Execution System / Mining Operation Management platform to make data actionable as variation is detected.
Connect your operational systems to enterprise resource planning.

Step Four: Automation is required and all the technology required to do this already exists

The level of detail require to drive Short Term Planning and bring Operational Stability to your operation requires automating, enabling technology. Relaying on a paper based and human dependent system unnecessarily burdens the organization with work better performed by available technology.

All the technologies you need to achieve operational stability already exist, if you take the time to research them. Invention is too slow, too expensive, and too uncertain when compared to discovery of what is available for rapid deployment from other industries.

Step Five: The system must be completely end-to-end

Holistic control is required and success must be measured against strategic objectives such as equipment and production cost, free cash flow, etc.

Provide yourself with the luxury of new information, with on-demand operational analytics.
Put standard measures in place to track variation reduction in processes and in conformance to plan.

STEP SIX: CHANGE management

The people who will play the most critical roles in making your vision a reality lie deep inside the organization. Do the following to ensure the program does not devolve into an IT project:

Communicate and continuously reinforce your vision for change.
Ensure everyone understands what is in it for them.
Think through the “people” side of the initiative and examine the organizational structure to determine new job roles.
Put a strong training plan in place, train more, and train again.
Connect the program to financial levers to build in accountability.

DO NOT SKIP ANY STEPS

It is important that none of the steps listed above be skipped. Leave any of them out and the value realized will be cut not just a little, but significantly. Skipping several steps multiples the lost value-add.

To learn more, download our free eBook “Six Steps to Operational Stability”. For more blog posts by Mark Bese, check out his series on Mining Execution Excellence.