Owners and operators must adapt quickly to changing market conditions to stay competitive in this complex industry.
The wealth of South Africa’s mineral resources is renown worldwide and so is the country’s expertise for their extraction. But there’s more to this market than reputation. With globalisation, the Mining industry is one of the most competitive, relying as much on human labour as technological wizardry. With resource prices fixed on the open market, the only way to increase turnover is to increase mining volumes and the only way to increase profitability is to reduce costs in the face of increasing raw material and energy costs.
In other words, the way to create shareholder value is to mine efficiently, improve product quality and to show employees that their demands are being viewed in the face of this global reality. This might mitigate industrial action and foster the spirit of competition needed to restore this industry to its former standard of excellence.
Digital Mining Transformation Begins with You
In a volatile market, you need to ensure your mining operations perform as efficiently as possible.
To be successful, you need a strategy that spans your global portfolio across the asset lifecycle. This means managing your assets in a safe and secure way, maximising production and increasing profitability. Digital technology can help you unite, analyse, and manage your engineering data, processes, and supply chain in an intelligent and efficient way. It can also help you operate with the highest levels of corporate social responsibility.
Delivering Proven Results
Discover our complete industrial software platform that spans the entire operational lifecycle. Remove silos, integrate your data, boost collaboration, and increase efficiency to maximise return on capital throughout your global portfolio – at all stages of the asset lifecycle.
Learn how we can help you transform your mining organisation.
Value Chain Optimisation
Benefit from visibility across the entire value chain in a unified environment from planning to scheduling to inventory.
Production Optimisation
Turn data into insights with downtime analysis, delay accounting and process optimisation.
Asset Performance Management
Master tools that can predict potential equipment failures and digitise your procedures and maintenance activities.
Next Generation Workforce
Gain foresight into potential equipment failures, and digitalise your procedures and maintenance activities.
Challenges facing the Mining, Metals and Minerals industry
Health and safety

Intelligent information
Requires accurate real-time information on tap anywhere throughout the operation. This information needs to be available 100% of the time irrespective of power failures, server malfunctions or network failures.
- System Platform
- InTouch Access Anywhere
- Historian
- SmartGlance
- Intelligence

Event resolution
Whether it’s a safety emergency or a production stoppage, the right personnel must know what to do without hesitation because this is not the time for trial and error. This makes human workflow mapping and management mandatory.
- Skelta BPM Workflow
Minimising production costs

Process optimisation
In some instances, “doing it the way it’s always been done” may no longer be an option. Redesigning beneficiation processes, for example, can be difficult but at least one large SA company has done it and saved hundreds of millions.
- Historian
- Intelligence
- Flow
- MES/Performance

Improved capital plant ROI and reduced maintenance costs
Mining machinery such as refrigeration plants, conveyors, diggers, trucks, etc. is costly and its life needs to be extended as long as possible. This can be achieved through the rigorous, real-time monitoring of downtime and Overall Equipment Effectiveness (OEE) as well as effective maintenance based on reality rather than the calendar.
- PRiSM
- MES/Operations
- IntelaTrac

Reduced energy costs
Keeping an eye on the meter is no longer good enough. Effective mine energy management involves tracking energy usage to batches and even shifts on a time basis in order to reduce energy usage during peak times but without affecting production.
- Corporate Energy Management

Reduced downtime
This is helped through real-time and historical trending of plant items as well as precisely matching production with demand.
- PRiSM
- MES/Performance

Reduced industrial process control and industrial IT engineering costs
The mining industry has to perform under increasingly tight budgetary constraints but with fewer and fewer engineers. The proven way to cope with this scenario in a changing world is through the design, implementation, enforcement and maintenance of standards. Standards drastically cut engineering costs and lower the cost of ownership for the automation system as a whole.
- System Platform
- Historian
- Intelligence
- Flow

Preserving past investments and assets
Most mines have a collection of disparate automation systems as they evolved over time. Although these are valuable assets, what’s far more valuable is the engineering time and effort that was invested in their proper operation. What’s needed in these instances is a system that is designed with this very scenario in mind and that can make all these systems work in concert.
- System Platform
- InTouch
- Historian
- Device Integration Server
Customer Stories