Progressive TSL’s Focus on Mining

In their drive to minimise operating costs, maximise production and gain full transparency of key financial indicators, best-of-breed software solutions and emerging technologies have a lot to offer the mining industry.

Over the coming years, it is predicted that: “advanced technology in mining operations will accelerate; increasingly becoming a necessity for firms to remain competitive.” Source: Mining Review.

Each stage of mining operations, from extraction through crushing and onto processing, comes with its challenges. Based on our experience working with the industry, Progressive TSL have developed finance, asset management and supply chain solutions that address the specific operational needs of mining.

Here we provide our insights into this sector.

Critical Challenges for Mining

• Avoid material shortages leading to hold-ups.
  Ensure all stages of the mining process are running at optimum levels with no hold-ups between stages. This may require stockpiling of essential inventory materials necessary to feed a specific stage of the process, e.g. arsenic and sodium cyanide for gold processing, zinc dust used as a reducing agent during smelting at metals plants, and hydrogen peroxide to enhance leach discovery at gold and silver mines.
• Track inventory
  Keep track of all inventory levels and locations to avoid unnecessary purchases, materials obsolescence or material shortages.
• Prolong life of assets
  Develop robust maintenance strategies for both static and mobile assets to prolong life, and avoid where possible, making additional capital expenditure during the life of the mine.
• Balance process optimisation with truck usage
  Ensure stages downstream of extraction, e.g. processing of the extracted raw materials, are kept running at optimised levels. These processes need to be balanced against maximising the payload of the trucks carrying these raw materials, minimising the total number of trips over the life of the mine. Every journey will take its toll on the wear and tear of the vehicle as well as incurring extra fuel costs.
• Key asset depreciation
  Correctly depreciate critical assets, including mobile (trucks, loaders, dozers) and static plant (ball mills, conveyors, etc.) over the mine’s lifetime in line with applicable financial regulations.
• Minimise maintenance downtime
  Guarantee maintenance activities are scheduled as efficiently as possible to minimise Mean Time to Repair (MTTR) while being mindful also of Mean Time to Breakdown (MTTB).
• Health and safety of your workforce
  For HSE reasons and efficient allocation of jobs, it is imperative to have full visibility of workforce status and availability – both Operations and essential support staff (i.e. Medics, Security and Welfare.)
• Cost reporting
  Budgets for a mining project will be tight, so it’s always essential to have accurate reporting of costs across all stages (in some cases including discovery costs), as well as standard G&A costs, to identify inefficiencies and manage profit margins.
• Manage the full asset lifecycle
  Tough decisions need to be made when a mine becomes depleted. For example, if a site has less than a year’s worth of extraction, should a significant amount of outlay be spent on a new mill or truck?

How Progressive TSL can address these challenges

Key deliverables of this functionally rich solution

• Data Harvesting
  These robust solutions assist in the efficient operation of a mine by simultaneously harvesting data. Such data can provide a rich analysis of your operations, allowing informed decision-making and driving global reporting in near real-time to all levels of the business.
• Maintenance Management
  Our mining clients have used the Infor EAM CMMS module to track the status and performance of critical equipment for mobile and fixed plants, including trucks, pumps, lift shafts etc. EAM can help you keep the right balance between predictive and reactive maintenance so that you aren’t over or under-maintaining any of your assets. Technicians can take action when equipment starts to underperform before it breaks down – if something needs to go offline to be repaired, EAM can plan and track your corrective maintenance down to the hour. For more information on the CMMS module, see our blog.
• Fleet Management
  HxGN EAM offers integrations with IoT sensor technology which can record many variables about the health and performance of the fleet of trucks, including temperature, fuel consumption, tyre pressure, tyre wear, the weight of trucks and their average speed. For more information on how EAM can manage your fleet, read our recent blog on Mining Fleet Management.
  EAM facilitates the use of industry standards such as the VMRS maintenance classification system. For more information on the capabilities of IoT, read our recent article on digitalisation.
• Workforce Management and security
  HxGN EAM provides visibility of operatives’ availability for work. Work Orders can be allocated to operatives, matching skill requirements to Tasks, equipment requirements (e.g. PPE like; harnesses, breathing apparatus and other specialist equipment) and tools.  EAM provides visibility of resource utilisation and will enable work to be assigned appropriately to meet the objectives.
• Inventory Management
  Procurement and Inventory Management provides full transparency from purchase requests right the way through the entire asset life cycle, gaining visibility across all your warehouses and sites. This clarity enables you to make the right procurement decisions at the right time and in the right quantities to keep your mining processes flowing while retaining a handle on expenditure. For more information on EAM and inventory, read this blog.
• Financial Management and Depreciation of Assets
  HxGN EAM, alongside your accounting system, e.g. Infor SunSystems, provides flexibility in financial models used to depreciate key assets. Example of models used includes depreciation based on distance travelled (for your mobile fleet) or production quantities (for your mobile and fixed plants). SunSystems supports a wide range of financial regulations to reflect the requirements of different geographical locations across the globe, including Syscohada and IFRS. Multiple rule sets can be implemented at the same time. You can read our recent blog on Financial Management for Mining Businesses for more insight into this and other financial issues.

Progressive TSL are Gold Channel Partners for Infor and HxGN EAM. This accolade recognises our experiences successfully implementing Infor solutions including HXGN EAM, Infor OS and SunSystems into asset-intensive industries across the globe. Progressive TSL would welcome the opportunity to talk to you about your finance, asset management and supply chain challenges and requirements.