This is Part 1 in a new series on Mining Innovation. Over the next few months, we will showcase how the Mining Industry can look to technologies that successfully advanced the performance of other industries.
Mining is on a quest for innovation to increase productivity.
With climbing industry costs and cyclical commodity prices, it’s clear that mining companies must focus on operational performance and project delivery with close attention to detail. As these economic struggles for the industry continue, Mining companies need to employ new technologies if they want to remain afloat.
A recent article in Compass Magazine featured an interview with Mark Cutifani, CEO of Anglo American, in which he spoke about sustainable innovation in mining. Cutifani stated that “as time goes on, there are less of the really great deposits to be found, so being the first to identify the potential of a resource and extract it more efficiently could give us a five-year advantage. The manufacturing sector has been in the position for the last 70 to 100 years where competitive advantage rests on your ability to innovate, how you run your underlying processes and being super-responsive to markets. We’ve got a lot to learn from our colleagues in other industries on all three fronts.”
By employing new technologies used by other industries, mining companies can better manage their businesses – and the bottom line – by:
- Reducing costs
- Increasing recovery
- Making real-time decisions
- Using its assets productively
- Meeting customer quality and quantity demands
- Ensuring safety and environmental compliance
Let’s take a look at how technology used in the Energy Industry can help the Mining Industry improve both productivity and efficiency.
Hydro-Québec
Hydro-Québec needed to perform a refurbishing feasibility study on its Manic-3 generating station and to evaluate the cost and time required to perform the project.
Engineers created a virtual model of the station and all the equipment it contained. They simulated the different refurbishing tasks. The types of analysis simulated during the refurbishing study were disassembling, moving and reassembling equipment. This required strict scheduling and the necessity to ensure the safety of the employees.
By virtually representing the plant and equipment, from simulating the dismantling to the moving and reassembling of equipment inside the plant, the study reduced project time by 200 weeks and saved CA N $50 million.
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Entergy Nuclear
Entergy Corporation’s Entergy Nuclear business unit, which manages the second largest fleet of nuclear reactors in North America, needed to improve safety through superior planning, shorten maintenance outages and transfer knowledge to a new generation of workers.
Traditional tools, including physical mockups, tabletop exercises and walkthroughs, are effective but expensive and cannot be stored or replicated for training and reuse. They created virtual 3D models of the plant based on laser scan data. Engineering processes were simulated and two previously unrecognized obstructions were identified and eliminated, saving the company one to two days outage time and up to $2 million. Detailed simulations allow workers to train and become familiar with tasks at hand prior to potentially hazardous operations, and for older workers to hand institutional knowledge on to a new generation of employees, quickly and comprehensively.
Read the Full Story
These are just two examples from which the mining industry can learn and utilize to improve performance. To learn more, download our FREE White Paper: Looking to technologies used by other industries to drive productivity & efficiency in mining
Be sure to check back later this month, as we share examples of how technology used by the Automotive Industry can benefit the Mining Industry.
UPDATE: Part Two is now available online.
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