Production Optimization: The Future of Digital Mining Optimization is Now
Credit to Author: Joseph McMullen| Date: Mon, 06 Nov 2017 10:43:52 +0000
By Rachel K. Carson (MarCom Intern for Process Industries)
No one likes delays. Whether it be an extra twenty minutes stuck in traffic or a back-ordered item you desperately want, delays cause time loss, increased expense, and overall direct inconvenience. Within the mining industry, delays must be avoided at all cost. Delays in scheduling and/or operations can cause increased mining expenditures, off-schedule events, and even, unexpected downtime. This is why Mining, Minerals, and Metals is taking embarking on a Digital Mining Transformation; to reduce delays and increase the overall efficiency and profitability potential within an asset and its people.
Production Optimization
An essential element to a mine’s Digital Mining Transformation is Production Optimization. The basis of Production Optimization is turning data into insight. Excessive, or current dark, data can be transformed into insightful measures and lessons learned for future implementation. Accounting capabilities are the most solid solution for this digital transformation. This solution prevents delays that slow down mining operations and put schedules and inventories behind.
According to many recent mining FY2017 Q2 reviews, some of the most common reasons for mining delays include:
- Power distributions
- Natural disasters
- Development and production of machinery
- Industrial and on-site safety issues
A Production Optimization solution collects data from these events and turns them into insights for better decision making and prediction capability for future knowledge.
Implementing Production Optimization in Real Time
The digital implementation of Production Optimization is easy, efficient, and productive. With a 
constant consulting approach, this pillar of digital transformation continues to press your mine for new ways to optimize. Here is how production optimization can easily be applied to your mine in real time:
- Pursue Expert Consulting. Consulting must begin with an area of most instability. From there, information is gathered and slowly continued outward, such that, information is gathered in a direction from inside to out.
- Implement APC. Once operations are stabilized, take certain circuits in the mining industry and further optimize them with APC. Furthering optimization is always continual growth outlook within industry companies. As already mentioned, a consistent consulting approach must continually be repeated to implement APC properly.
- Analyze Production Downtime Causes. Make continuous efficiency improvements by analyzing production downtime causes and prioritize maintenance, new equipment, and new operating procedures. Report on scheduled and unscheduled downtime events, as well as, under-performing equipment, all of which help determine sources of delays. Performing these routine checkups also stabilizes production at, or near, maximum sustainable rates.
- Integrate Process Control. Once production rates are stabilized, apply process optimization strategies to consider not only unit operations but the entire system and its constraints, including energy & financial inputs.
Eager to learn more about Production Optimization?
On August 30th, Doug Warren outlined the importance of Production Optimization in Digital Mining Transformation webinar. He explains how production optimization effectively turns data into insights, and how to implement strategies for better mining efficiency, productivity, and profitability. He also explains how production optimization plays an important part of one of the four pillars to the digital mining transformation. Download now to learn more.
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