Abstract:

Everyone knows that the overall objective of a robust supply chain management process in the mining industry is to have the right quantity of material in the right place, at the right time, and at the right quality. Yet this apparent simplicity leaves miners wondering why it is so difficult to achieve and sustain.

Miners from all around the world experience lack of visibility through the interdependencies (from pit to port) of the value chain, multiple versions of the truth, poor planning capacities caused by the incapacity to run satisfactorily "what if" scenarios, data inaccuracy, and inadequate reporting of the right KPIs. This greatly increases the cost of operations through quality penalties from delivering incorrect material or demurrage costs that result from material shortages.

Experience has shown that one important root cause for such symptoms is the industry’s heavy reliance on legacy systems involving poorly managed spreadsheets with little or no integration to third-party software. This broken data flow does not empower the right person with the right information at the right moment to take the right action.

This presentation uses numerous case studies from different commodities (base metals, iron ore, coal) to illustrate how benefits can be achieved through a digital transformation of supply chain management.

Biography of the presenter: Phillip has over 12 years' experience delivering and supporting information systems to support pit to port operations in mining supply chains. He has been involved in projects globally, across Asia Pacific, Africa, and the Americas, covering various resources including coal, iron ore, and nickel ore. A focus of the projects that Phillip has been involved in has been to pull together information from various sources across the mining, logistics and shipping operations into a consistent model, which then allows the interdependencies to be made visible to all stakeholders, and to support improved planning and decision making, better utilization of resources, and to lower costs such as penalties on quality and demurrage.

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Simon Gariepy