During Australia’s recent mining boom, high demand and high prices created favourable market conditions for investment and expansion of mining operations which masked some operational inefficiencies. However, since the market conditions have shifted in recent years, exposing the industry to volatile commodity prices and increasing costs, it has compromised the industry’s competitive advantage. To combat such market conditions, mining operators need to strive towards operational efficiencies by optimising their production at the lowest cost possible.
But how can operational efficiencies be achieved? The answer lies in an investment in operational intelligence. An article by Deloitte concisely explains that “an effective Operational Intelligence capability will provide CXOs with valuable insights to help remediate production variances and identifying operational improvement opportunities”.
Since operational intelligence automates a mining operator’s data and integrates information across its value chain and between mine sites, it results in data-driven decisions to be made which ultimately assists in improving operational efficiencies and maximising performance.
Putting Operational Intelligence to work
At Cubility, we often assist clients with the implementation of integrated operational intelligence solutions and specifically with the avoidance of common challenges such as over-measuring, over-reporting and data integrity. Below is a tip on how to implement such solutions effectively.
Avoid over-measuring:
It is important for mining operators to take an end-to-end view and to align data measurements with its Key Performance Indicators (KPIs). This provides clarity on what to measure and prevents them over-measuring unnecessarily.
Avoid over-reporting:
Similarly, by taking an end-to-end view, traditional stand-alone departmental reporting silos are removed, ensuring that the multiple, overlapping and generally non-KPI based reporting is replaced by KPI-aligned standardised reporting delivering the right information to the right people at the right time.
Avoid data integrity issues:
Implementing data governance, master data management and reducing (or eliminating) manual data entry is key to ensuring that data from multiple sites and different systems is validated, consolidated and accurate.
To summarise, operational intelligence is one of the key levers for improving mining operator’s operational efficiencies and maximising performance. To gain the best insights and performance improvements, data measurements should be aligned with their KPIs, data reports should be KPI-aligned and standardised and data governance/ master data management should be implemented.
Cubility is a management and technology consultancy that works with businesses to solve operational problems, improve compliance, and manage change well. Our multi-disciplined team is equipped with the technical and operational knowledge as well as project execution skills to ensure the success of any project. If your business needs assistance, please get in touch with us. We would love to hear from you.
