With the acceleration of global clean energy development, the demand for the mining industry is rapidly expanding. For an asset intensive industry, 30% to 50% of operating expenses are related to operations and maintenance. The mining industry has a great opportunity to reverse this proportion by updating operations and maintenance methods, thereby achieving more strategic asset management.

When operators are still using outdated passive operation and maintenance methods, the cost is the highest – conducting inspections and repairing in case of malfunctions. This method increases costs, parking time, and personnel risks. Nowadays, benchmark mining companies have achieved their goals of reducing costs, improving availability, and enhancing operational performance by introducing standardized maintenance methods.

Using modern technology, standardized maintenance enables operators to monitor equipment assets and accurately predict and resolve potential issues before they occur. This method not only supports asset reliability, but also reduces personnel safety risks related to machine failures. More reliable equipment also means less energy consumption and fewer emissions.

The Road to Standardized Operations and Maintenance

Transitioning to standardized operations and maintenance, starting with the adoption of more intelligent devices, significantly improving process visibility through embedded sensors and digital technology. These intelligent devices can generate valuable data, which engineers can use to predict potential problems and determine the root cause before faults occur.

New mining projects can incorporate intelligent architecture from the beginning of design, and integrated automation can facilitate a faster transition to standardized operations and maintenance. For existing mining facilities, the road to intelligence requires more skills, adopting a phased approach based on return on investment, and prioritizing the installation of sensors and digital devices in large key equipment assets. Sensors and automated analysis form the foundation for the transition to standardized operations and maintenance.

The automation ecosystem must prioritize interoperability in order to be effective. The proprietary technology ‘black box’ forms a data island, while open standard system protocols enable the entire enterprise to operate and monitor all on-site devices. This accessibility, in turn, allows remote monitoring and operations centers to provide access to necessary data for all stakeholders. This collaboration enables engineering, process, reliability, and metallurgical experts to make decisions that are more suitable for the entire process flow, rather than just one device.

Automation also improves the reliability of equipment assets through machine learning platforms and advanced analysis technologies. These platforms and analysis software can merge process and reliability data to build algorithms specifically tailored to a given process, enabling operational decisions to be made based on actual conditions. These data can flow upwards and be integrated into other higher-level systems to improve the operational efficiency of the entire enterprise system.

Standardized operation and maintenance

Emerson’s global customers have discovered that standardized operations can save time and costs while improving operational performance, particularly in temperature and vibration monitoring.

Newmont, located in Minera Yanacocha, Peru, is the largest gold mine in Latin America and requires cost-effective constant temperature monitoring of its semi-automatic grinding machine motors to avoid daily parking losses of $1.4 million. Emerson’s intelligent wireless solution helps measure motor temperature at four different points, while DeltaV ™ The control system integrates an alarm system to promptly notify operators when extreme temperatures occur. This solution can also generate trend data, enabling Newmont to provide motor manufacturers with information that can be used for improvement.

A phosphate mine in the central Atlantic is seeking vibration monitoring and predictive maintenance solutions from Emerson to provide services for its important heavy-duty shovel excavators. These devices used to rely on manual monitoring several miles away, resulting in delays related to progress and safety. Emerson’s online monitoring solution enables the enterprise to access and analyze data from a central control room, saving $5.8 million annually due to faster data collection speed. During the parking period, the improvement in reliability saved an additional $1.3 million in costs.

A copper mining company in Peru is seeking assistance from Emerson to maintain the continuous operation of 14 critical conveyor belts that transport ore to crushing areas and copper processing plants with varying power demands. Emerson has installed a set of AMS edge computing vibration monitoring system, which can provide vibration data of key conveyor components, automatically analyze the frequency spectrum, directly output the fault results, and provide the severity of the fault to facilitate maintenance decisions. The vibration monitoring system ensures extremely high reliability and control capability, while also improving safety. Technicians can monitor the situation from the control room.