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Increasing productivity, efficiency and safety in mining
Mining is currently seeing the start of what will be the great convergence of IT and operational technologies. Many observers have touted it as the foundation for the industry’s next technological step change, which will be focused on an effort to facilitate productivity gains, efficiency, and safety. A study by consultancy firm McKinsey showed that multi-factor productivity was growing up until 2005, but it dropped 0.7 percent per year until 2011 when the study was carried out. A report by the Mineral Council of Australia also highlighted that the mining industry last delivered a productivity increase in 2003, but since then overall productivity in the minerals sector has fallen by 30 percent.
Late last year IBM, as part of its Smarter Planet initiative signaled that the industry is reaching the tipping point for productivity and must innovate.
“This right now is the tipping point, we believe, where the risk of inaction outweighs the risk of action,” Andrew Stevens, IBM Australia and New Zealand’s managing director, said.
Philip Kirchlechner who has spent years working in the iron ore game said that the move to automation was the only way for Australian miners to remain competitive in the world market.
“We have to do things smarter, we have to use technology to raise productivity, and that’s going to touch on a whole spectrum of mining,” he said. “All the way from finding the new mines, processing better, mining more efficiently.”
Tim Day has been in charge of rolling out BHP’s automation program at its brand new Jimblebar mine in the Pilbara. He says there are several drivers for the change
“The single biggest reason is safety,” Mr Day said. “On a mine site, one of the issues we have is that we expose operators to machinery for long periods of time. We have fatigue issues, so it takes our people away from the front line.”
The dangers of mining are all too real. A recent Department of Mines study analyzed the deaths of 52 miners over the past 12 years, finding worker fatigue and inexperience with mining risks to be the biggest cause of accidents.
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