Decoda’s latest digital system is changing the way all aspects of a mining value chain collaborate to get the best outcomes.
An Integrated Performance Management (IPM) solution may sound complicated, but Decoda’s new system has made it easy for mines to get the most out of their operations.
Decoda IPM’s specifically designed software allows operators to visualise their mine value chain as a cohesive system, reducing financial risks and becoming a single source of truth, pinpointing exactly where any drops in productivity are occurring.
“IPM is a set of tools and processes that help mining companies close any performance gaps between what is actually being delivered and what the potential is,” Decoda chief technical officer Ian Hollingworth told Australian Mining.
“It collects data from various systems used in day-to-day operations and allows different parts of the mining operation to understand what is driving performance.”
There are a number of reasons a mine might experience a drop in productivity. Human aspects such as a limited understanding of the factors that drive overall system performance can contribute, as can inadequate appreciation of the risks that are inherent to mine plans and schedules.
But the overarching reason a mine might not be producing to its best potential is invariably a lack of collaboration across related aspects of the operation. And that’s where Decoda IPM can really shine.
“If your end-to-end process is complicated and difficult to manage, then it’s natural to break it up into different operational and functional silos,” Hollingworth said.
“But the only way we can get a system that is adaptive and will change to unexpected events is to have collaboration between the different parts of the system. And that typically is not what happens now.
“So we’re seeing a sort of chasm between the planning people and production, different aspects of production, and so on; (and) because of this, a lot of mine plans aren’t met – and people ask why.
“IPM provides a mechanism to show operators what was planned to happen and what actually did happen, and it shows why and where the change occurred.”
Decoda IPM is designed to foster that all-important collaboration between the planning, production and maintenance departments.
With its simulation capacity, the system can give teams insights on the likelihood of achieving their targets based on historical performance, aligning all teams to an established common goal.
“Generally speaking, mining is a difficult operation to control tightly,” Hollingworth said.
“You have staff turnover, geological uncertainty, the need to extract and manipulate solid materials, deep market cycles, and these all contribute to a greater propensity to experience variations in performance (compared with other industries).
“Uncertainty about the fine-grained geology of a mining operation makes things difficult to predict and plan, and you’re extracting and manipulating large amounts of solid material in a way that is very hard to control in a fully automated fashion.
“Good progress is being made to move toward fully automated operating equipment for some aspects of mining, but there’s certainly no end-to-end automation.”
Decoda IPM aims to shift the burden off mining companies when it comes to understanding end-to-end performance by systematically recording shift events in overall equipment effectiveness (OEE) terms, highlighting discrepancies between actual and planned outcomes and their subsequent downstream impacts.
This information is extremely valuable as it enables supervisors and managers to address performance gaps through targeted improvements, better aligning planning assumptions with actual capabilities, or a combination of both.
“It’s fairly normal for a mine to achieve productivity levels of 20–40 per cent below their best potential,” Hollingworth said. “That’s a big gap compared with other industries.”
Decoda is currently testing the IPM with a pilot customer and is hoping to deploy the IPM across many more mine sites in time.
“While we are in the very early days of trialling Decoda IPM, we have spoken to various companies and industry veterans to really make sure that the way IPM works makes sense,” Hollingworth said.
“It really is a new category of system, so we made sure to get that feedback from the industry.
“At the moment, there are a lot of tensions and differences in perspectives across the mining value chain on every site. We’re seeking to change that through Decoda IPM while hopefully helping operations become more efficient, productive and collaborative.”
This feature appeared in the July 2023 issue of Australian Mining.
