A Miner's View of Operational Improvement in the Mining Industry

Niche area of process improvement in the mining industry needs a very specialized skill and understanding. By definition, it refers to any measures taken to optimize mining operations in terms of cost, throughput, and efficiency and achieve better tangible and intangible performance. Tangibility pertains to cost and revenue, and intangible benefits pertain to any societal and other norms (including softer aspects of business) improvement. In a raw scenario, it pertains to identifying and omitting/replacing low-output process steps while continuously reducing cycle time as well as enhancing productivity in each step.

While operational improvement in mining drives towards an achievable target of a low-cost scenario with high output, the drive for implementation always revolves around whether it is a top-down or bottom-up process. Mining is a people-focused, community-developed, and capital-intensive industry; therefore, while lean practices, waste removal, etc. may be exercised with full effect, the human resource aspect of business becomes the most effective tool, and therefore the bottom-up approach to implementation becomes crucial.

For any operational improvement in process, we need to implement the following steps:

1. Analysis of current operation – People, Process, Technology, and Governance
2. Best Practices benchmarking and gap analysis
3. Bottom-up effective Implementation roadmap
4. Driving change management – People and Process

The people side of change management becomes the focus as even a single wayward decision may cause multiple failures and losses.

Being a technical person and having led the mine from geology and operation sides, I can certainly highlight that an operational improvement project is best driven by people who understand what is underneath and how it will be extracted. The logic of mining becomes apt and urgent for any operational improvement project.

Key Challenges of Operational Improvement

In-depth understanding of the outcome for the operational improvement team and core operation team – There is always a gap in understanding the bigger picture for the PI – Process Improvement Team and Operation team, and therefore it becomes very important that the whole process is led by people who have combined intelligence of the following:

1. Mining Engineering and Geology
2. Finance and Procurement
3. Human Resource and Change Management
4. Best practices and benchmarks

Roughly, it is taken as a thumb rule that project management factors like inappropriate scheduling of time and cost estimates, and lack of focus on scenario analysis derail the process improvement outcome. Conflicts among stakeholders are another major reason for the same, and it becomes extremely crucial to manage every stakeholder concretely and specifically. Supply chain shortfalls, external volatilities, and any market/technological disruptions may be other causes of failure.

LSI has been roping in the best talents from industry and consulting backgrounds who know mining and have worked in the mining industry as leaders for most of the global leads and understand the need for operational improvement for the mining industry. Our team’s diverse range of talents includes experts on Operations, Project Management, Cost Optimization, Digital Enablement, and HR Analytics who can very well come up with solutions to any operational challenge.