Emerging Western Australian Iron Ore Company Implements MineMarket

Datamine and a rapidly growing iron ore mining company in Western Australia, have successfully implemented the MineMarket logistics solution at one of their operations in under two months. The company had plans to expand production at their mine to a rate of 15 million tonnes per annum by the end of 2020.  Supporting this expansion is a targeted digital transformation program that will improve efficiency and scale with the operation into the future.

The Challenge

The mining operations previously relied on Excel spreadsheets to track material movements from the mine. These spreadsheets were accessed by multiple staff working on a FIFO basis, increasing the complexity of managing files and data integrity.

As production increases, the amount of manual work required to maintain spreadsheets and the opportunity for errors increases. Lack of auditability and transparency add to the challenge and ultimately a spreadsheet-based system cannot reliably scale with the operation’s needs.

The Solution

MineMarket is a proven technology that centralises all mining inventory data across the operations from the mine to the port.  MineMarket has been implemented with fully user-configurable workflows and controlled data collection, enforcing standardised naming conventions for all system entities from pit blocks to stockpiles and saleable products at port. Eliminating different versions of spreadsheets in use across the mining value chain has delivered an efficient, scalable and reliable system with one version of the truth.

Timely reports are available to management, allowing for faster response and decision making based on reliable data.

Implementation Approach

With an experienced and confident internal team, the iron ore company committed resources to the implementation project, forming a joint team with Datamine consultants.  An Agile project management methodology was utilised, with short ‘sprints’ delivering working functionality at each stage throughout the implementation.

By using this approach, travel was significantly reduced, with only one on-site visit by Datamine team members in the entire project.  The involvement of the iron ore company’s team members from the outset provided ownership of the project and joint responsibility for achieving project timelines. This approach also minimised the amount of user training required before go-live, as the staff had learnt the system progressively as it was configured and commissioned.

The Benefits

Since implementing MineMarket, the operation has experienced several business benefits including:

• Less time wasted inputting and validating data, managing files and creating reports.
• Transparency of mining inventory throughout the entire mining value chain.
• Information available in timely manner to assist with decision making.
• Robust and reliable, single source of the truth.

Conclusion

By working together, Datamine and the iron ore company have rapidly implemented a logistics solution that delivers immediate benefits and is scalable for future needs.

Using a blended team and lean scope enabled them to implement the MineMarket technology with remote involvement from the vendor.

With the base MineMarket technology now in place, the iron ore company has future opportunities to leverage additional capabilities such as smart contracts (digitally automated invoicing), demand planning, blend optimisation and more.