Smart Mining

Enabling Smart Mining and Disrupting the Supply Chain

With the introduction of Industry 4.0 or Industrial Internet of Things (IIoT), digital transformation has begun to show its profound impact on the mining and logistics industry. Connectivity has the opportunity to empower millions of people, providing businesses with unparalleled opportunities for value creation and capture.

Within the mining and metals industry, digitization will be a force that changes the nature of companies and their interaction with employees, communities, government and the environment at every step of the supply chain. From mineral exploration and valuation, through mining, ore processing and metals production, to downstream sales and distribution, digitization is blurring traditional industry lines and challenging the business models of the past.

For Companies embracing digitization, it offers the promise of a more nimble and profitable business, with improved decision-making and increased employee empowerment.

Harnessing technology, centralization of data and real-time traceability is key to making mining more efficient, safer and more profitable. According to the World Economic Forum four themes are expected to be central to the digitization of the industry over the next decade.

What stands out for us in this report is the following key criteria:

  • Sensors will be a key enabler towards automation, operational efficiencies and collection of data across multiple sources and areas of the business.
  • Connected mobility and visualisation in the workforce will empower workers in the field in real-time.
  • Linking operations, IT layers, devices and systems that are currently separate will provide much needed illumination into places, people and processes along various stages of the supply chain.
  • Next-generation analytics and decision making will be key  enablers for the capture and processing of various data sources within and beyond the traditional value chain providing real-time decision support and future projections.
  • Digitization could generate more than $320 billion of industry value over the next decade, with a potential benefit of approximately $190 billion for the mining sector and $130 billion for the metals sector.

So what are the implications of this?

  • Those organisations that can move from being digital laggards to a digital first movers, the value is real: 
    • A Fast Follower mining company more than doubles its earnings ( measured as EBITDA) to 25% versus a business-as-usual organization’s 11%
    • A First Mover more than triples its earnings to 35%.

So how do the mines enable themselves to become digital Fast Followers or First Movers?

  • The first step is to gain Illumination by doing a Readiness Assessment of your environment, systems and data being collected and presented.
  • We “Walk-the-Line” with you going through your process, meeting the people involved and finding out the challenges associated with the normal day-to-day tasks through your Supply Chain process.
  • Based on this we submit a proposal that is aligned to ISO 18788 requirements that will help “plug” the gaps we find in the environment,  enabling the mine to move to towards it digital goals.
  • Using enabling technologies like IOT, Big Data and AI we illuminate the processes throughout the supply chain, consolidating all information into the Smart Ostrich Digital Supply Chain Ledger allowing for a single source of data to  represent the supply chain and provide dashboards for all lines of business.

THE SMART OSTRICH DIGITAL TRACEABILITY SOLUTION

The mining Industry is experiencing a revolution in the regulatory compliance of supply chain practices needing to adhere to provenance of origin demands. This demand for proof of supply chain, the limited consolidation and visibility of data across global operations and the inability to provide secure provenance in the supply of goods has necessitated the design of a more trusted solution.

The Mineral Supply Chain Journey

Smart Ostrich has pioneered a Digital Traceability Solution by designing Smart Freight in Bulk Containers (Smart FIBC Container) that have at its foundation, a technology that autonomously captures real time data across an integrated Active Inventory Monitoring system.

This Smart FIBC trace solution actively inventories (every 5 min) the product provenance from raw material handling onsite and continues to record movement and product lots for the duration of the “in-transit” supply chain until delivery  to consignee. It withstands external attempts to compromise the digital ledger thus maintaining trusted provenance. 

ENSURING ABSOLUTE AND TOTAL CONTROL

Real-Time Inventory monitoring and Data Analytics will give you complete control over your business processes and help you to make informed business decisions. Constant communication among sensors, locations and analytics engines will ensure that you get notified if anything related to your business operations don’t go as desired.

With the implementation of the Smart Ostrich Digital Traceability Ledger in Mining you can prioritise large numbers of orders to serve the needs of your customers. It makes the protection, control of ownership, planning, forecasting and prediction of multiple deliveries to multiple locations on-time possible. With autonomous monitoring and real-time analysis of data, confirmed chain-of-custody, and security of goods resulting in increased customer loyalty and customer retention.

SINGLE VIEW OF SUPPLY CHAIN PEFORMANCE AND INVENTORY

Due to the fact that we are tracking minerals from when they are bagged at the mine right through to delivery to port or customer, the visibility the platform and sensors gives can be summed up with the following  example dashboard below.

This can be populated with real-time data collected by our sensors and platform allowing the execs in each line of the business and at Board level, to see at any point of time where they are tracking from a Production, Logistics, Quality and Sales, measuring this against the KPI’s defined by the mine.

 All automated without the need for multiple inputs from different spreadsheets, databases, people and the various “versions of truth” this normally causes. 

All these dashboards below are fed information from the platform and sensors in REAL-TIME, so will always be up to date with latest figures.

  • Operational Target:  will show you the actual amount of bags filled, tonnage produced and trucks loaded per day against the production targets you set, so the guys on site can quickly see if they are behind or ahead of the targets during each day. This allows for changes to be implemented straight away if they see they are falling behind or don’t have enough trucks to load etc.
  • Last 14 Days:  shows in a quick view how many bags were produced over the last 14 days, Green being over target bags per day and red being below. This gives a quick view where you can see trends over the 14 days. If you see that the last 7 days production figures were below target you can start asking questions as to why this is happening and make rectifications to address this.
  • Resource movement: shows the amount of tonnage physically shipped from the mine to port/customer, again showing if there is a shortfall against the forecasted amounts or not.
  • Mine Tonnage Produced YTD: gives a view of the production figures for the year and how that compares to the Year Production targets.
  • Logistics: Gives a quick view of logistics performance based on KPI’s required. Showing if the logistics side is meeting the shipment targets to enable Sales to reach the forecasted sales targets
  • Product Quality: Gives a quick view of the QC values of the product produced over a period of time. This allows you to see if the quality produced is increasing or decreasing over time, as well as the effect the QC value had on targets, QC value is bad then lots created cannot be sold etc.
  • Supply Chain Inventory: Shows in real-time the value and tonnage of product anywhere in your current supply chain. AT the Mine, in-transit, in port or shipped.
  • Sales Tracker YTD: Shows a view of sales achieved against targets for the year as well as the shortfall. This gives you a quick view as to where sales is tracking and if they are behind or ahead, allowing decisions to be made to increase sales or stockpile goods for better pricing etc?
  • Transport KPI: Shows average trip times from Mine to Port/Customer and can be measured against an agreed period from the logistics company to see if they are achieving the trip times or not?
  • Tonnage Sold KPI: Shows the tonnage sold for the year and how it is tracking against the production targets in real-time.

We believe the above dashboard would add real value to any operation because if you cannot measure something you cannot manage it. At a quick glance you can see in real-time where all the lines of business are tracking and where there are bottlenecks or issues in the business, which then can be rectified.

All the info collected in the above dashboard are made possible by the Platform and Sensors that make up the Smart Ostrich Digital Traceability Ledger.

IN SUMMARY

The 4th Industrial Revolution is here and Digital Transformation will change the way we do business in the future. Talk to Smart Ostrich to Illuminate your environment, protect your resources and help address your Clean Mineral initiatives.

To contact us please click on the link below and one of our engineers will contact you to understand your business and the challenges facing your company in this new age of digital disruption.