Identify opportunities to improve KPIs across the flowsheet
Plan and implement upgrades to achieve best outcomes for investment
Monitor and measure results to empower continuous improvement process
Sustainably maximise production and profitability
Maximise productivity and realise your plant’s full potential through continuous performance optimisation
Demand for minerals is rising. That’s the good news. But mining is also getting harder, while pressure is on to improve the industry’s ESG. In response, mines must take steps to maximise productivity and realise their full potential via systematic and ongoing performance optimisation. Which is where we come in.
What we offer
Continuous sustainable productivity improvements with PerformanceIQ® Services
The pressure is on to meet rising global demand for minerals. At the same time mine’s must control costs, keep people safe, protect communities, and reduce environmental harm. These are significant challenges that can only be solved through partnership.
PerformanceIQ Services from FLSmidth is that partnership. It’s us, working with you, to plug the gap between current performance levels and the sort of ambitious targets needed to deliver truly sustainable productivity gains.
PerformanceIQ Services
Your partner in productivity
With a dedicated onsite team, supported by the PerformanceIQ hub, our global mining services centre, we partner with you to maximise productivity and achieve your plant’s full potential by:
Identifying performance gaps
Prioritising solutions
Taking actions with defined targets
Monitoring, adjusting and enhancing actions against goals
Achieving sustainable productivity improvements
What is PerformanceIQ Service and how will it benefit you?
Watch our team explain PerformanceIQ Services which launched at PERUMIN 2022.
How does it work? The five steps to performance optimisation
Step 1: Bottleneck analysis
Through a comprehensive audit and deep technical analysis of your operational and maintenance processes, we uncover the bottlenecks and highlight opportunities for improvement. To do so, we look at all the various inputs to your process, from materials to process control technologies and people. We also draw on the experience gained from thousands of optimisation projects at mines around the world.
Every operation has gaps – but no two operations are the same. So this is an entirely bespoke service that we customise to your needs and targets.
Step 2: Workshop solutions
Once we have completed this discovery process, we bring our findings to an in-depth and in-person workshop, where we identify all opportunities to make meaningful improvements to your operation.
This could include specific training programmes. It might be new digital tools – such as the ECS/ProcessExpert® advanced process control software, our LoadIQ smart sensor solution, or our online condition monitoring services delivered by experienced process experts. Or it could be specific equipment upgrades, e.g., replacing wear panels with longer-life, higher performing alternatives.
Step 3: Prioritise the opportunities
We will then look to prioritise the opportunities identified in the previous two steps by financial impact and delivery time. This will take into account our current offerings and capabilities. We will also set expectations here for what can be achieved and how we will monitor, measure and validate the results.
Step 4: Take action
This is when we put all of our learnings into action to implement the agreed solutions. Backed by any necessary training and support from the experts at PerformanceIQ hub, we work with your onsite team to deliver tangible performance improvement.
Step 5: Monitor the results
Our ultimate aim is continuous improvement. This means continuous monitoring and reporting of the results. By doing so, we can continuously adjust and take action to ensure we achieve our implementation goals.
Of course, we’re not new to performance optimisation. We’ve been working with our mining customers for years to improve their mining processes.
As part of extensive work with a major copper miner in the Americas to improve SAG mill performance, we recommended installing our LoadIQ digital mill load optimisation tool in conjunction with our expert control system. LoadIQ monitors mill load in real time and provides set points for bearing pressure and mill speed. When integrated with our expert control system, it automatically adjusts mill load to boost throughput, reduce power consumption and increase energy efficiency.
The results included a 7% to 15% increase in throughput, an 8% decrease in energy consumption, and reduced energy intensity per tonne of copper produced.
We were invited by a polymetallic mine in Mexico to assess performance issues related to the design of its SAG discharger liners. After assessing the situation on site, we were able to provide an optimised discharger liner design that reduced the number of parts from 72 to 27. We also optimised the wear materials to improve wear life.
As a result, we were able to extend replacement intervals and speed-up installation time. The optimised design helped to increase grinding efficiency and reduce power consumption.
Based on previous experience with our filters and thickeners, Indian mining company, Hindustan Zinc, asked us to advise on a dry tailings solution based on our sedimentation and filtration technology. Supported by our test facilities in Chennai, we demonstrated the effectiveness of this solution over that of alternative proposals. We also offered a one-source solution for equipment and engineering, which was attractive to the client.
Our solution achieved better-than-expected dewatering, and over 86% of process water in the tailings is now recycled. As a result, the mine can expand production without increasing water draw in an area of high-water stress.
Together, we can do more (with less)
The mining industry has very real challenges ahead. Meeting the needs of the green transition while reducing the environmental impact of mineral recovery and processing will be complex, to say the least. The only path forward is through partnership. We must work together to raise the bar on operations and maintenance best practice. We must increase our understanding of the role digital technologies will play in optimisation. Above all, we must be more ambitious about what mine and mineral processing operations can achieve in terms of productivity, efficiency and sustainability.
Customer stories
How an issue with SAG mill dischargers become a nine-year-and-counting collaboration
Stay on top of trends, analyses and innovations moving the mining industry.
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