In the competitive mining and metals industry, smelting operations face challenges from outdated processes and isolated systems. These lead to inefficiencies that compromise productivity, safety, and sustainability, adding pressure on operational efficiency and compliance with industry standards. This article explores the critical inefficiencies inherent in traditional smelting operations and introduces our software solution designed to centralise and digitise operations planning and execution. By centralising planning activities and providing timely insights, our software helps optimize operational flow, enforce safety protocols, and ensure compliance with industry standards, supporting business growth and operational resilience.

Manual and Disconnected Processes

Many smelting operations still rely on manual planning and scheduling tools that are essential for supporting the rigor of their technology stack. These tools include PLC and SCADA systems, Asset Management, and Production Scheduling. However, these tools and applications often operate in isolation—not only from each other but also across different departments, processes, and work areas. Such disconnection leads to significant inefficiencies and waste, poor coordination, and a backlog of maintenance work orders, which adversely affect equipment performance and utilization. Additionally, the reliance on multiple uncoordinated plans, each built around specific plant and departmental needs, is often stored in silos. As a result, there is a significant disconnect between planning and execution. This gap undermines the timeliness and quality of work, increases operational costs, and poses safety risks.

Throughput and Production Quality

Efficient coordination and execution across all production stages—from carbon processing to liquid metal and cast products—are essential for maximising plant output and ensuring high product quality. However, outdated planning tools, suboptimal standards, gaps in shift-to-shift planning continuity, and poor communication often result in significant operational challenges. These include the overproduction of non-saleable products, increased defects and rework, and plant instability caused by poorly managed metal flow. These inefficiencies often lead to extended task durations as the workforce focuses on meeting production targets, sometimes at the expense of operational efficiency and product quality. Without rigorous resource management and integrated activity management, work can unnecessarily extend throughout shifts, leading to increased energy consumption, continued maintenance challenges, and obscured operational problems due to shift work swelling to meet throughput capability unnecessarily.

Deskless Workforce Management

The success of operational targets, strategic plans, and goals significantly depends on the deskless workforce—the operators who execute routine work and are at the frontline of decision-making must adapt to variability and unplanned activities. While production schedules and rolling plans may extend to asset utilisation and MES systems, they often neglect the resourcing of enabling activities, people skills, and availability. Effective planning for these critical tasks and routine work is essential for achieving the best operator status and enhancing operational performance. Disconnects between planning and execution, and failing to empower the workforce, lead to increased variability, non-conformance, and non-compliance, undermining safe and efficient operations.

Metal Flow & Connected Productivity

Metal flow, a critical component of smelting operations, suffers uniquely under the strain of siloed departmental planning. Specifically, misalignments between reduction and casting processes can significantly destabilize production. Such poor synchronisation often leads to costly instabilities in reduction lines and increases delays and quality issues in casting. These issues are exacerbated by inadequate communication and coordination, resulting in unnecessary downtime, increased defect rates and rework, and reduced overall efficiency. Addressing these challenges requires a seamlessly integrated approach to planning and execution across all production departments.

Solution

Real-Time Data Utilization and Adaptive Execution

By leveraging integrated work management capabilities and mobile technology, our software delivers Short Interval Control along with real-time data insights. This enables operations to dynamically identify and address variability, optimize plans in response to changing conditions on the shift, and facilitate informed, critical decision-making rooted in operational best practices. The timely flow of operational information enhances decision-making and communication, ensuring effective execution and responsive operations.

Enhanced Safety and Compliance

Our digital planning tools and visualisations of schedules and work areas, along with skills management and critical controls, visually display potential conflicts and hazards, while reducing operational risks. This approach ensures compliance with stringent safety standards and reinforces a culture of safety. By enabling organisations to establish and manage their safety protocols, our software enhances risk management and quality assurance, ensuring that all personnel consistently engage in best practices and return home safely daily.

Cross-Functional Collaboration

With multi-user login capabilities and real-time collaboration tools, our software ensures that communication flows across all departments and teams. This fosters a strong culture of integrated work management and effective resolution of conflicts, enhancing overall operational efficiency and teamwork.

Continuous Improvement

Our software supports the continuous improvement of your work management processes by enabling behaviours that align workforce actions with the goals of your business. Our software offers connected planning, execution, and reporting tools to create and execute plans, measure execution against those plans, and identify obstacles that might prevent successful delivery. By understanding and addressing these obstacles, our software fosters a continuous improvement loop, reinforcing a culture of excellence and adaptability. This systematic approach promotes the standardisation of work processes, ensuring consistency and ongoing enhancements in safety and operational effectiveness across all levels of the organization.

Unlock Lean Management & Enable Six Sigma

Create customer value and identify waste by leveraging our solution to drive compliance and rigour through technology that can integrate workflows, and processes, and support your data pipeline for better, more informed decision-making. Our software comes out of the box with features and functions that will enable your operation to identify and resolve waste, hidden bottlenecks, disconnected processes, and workflows, whilst enabling more rapid and successful deployments of improvement projects. By improving operational efficiency, our software directly helps reduce costs by optimizing resource utilization and reducing waste.