Covering Your Assets: This Mining Company Uses Real-Time Tracking To Save Money

In a world of rapid change, it’s a bit of a gross understatement to say the mining industry has myriad challenges to overcome.

Global competition, tighter regulations, managing constituent expectations and the constant need to consolidate and optimize the business portfolio, are putting a drag on shareholder returns, asset utilization and efficient resource allocation for the mining industry.

Using digital technologies, including IoT, Machine Learning and others, can help overcome these challenges in order to unlock the huge economic value that other industry experts believe is in the range of 5–9% of EBITDA.

Naturally, I am always on the hunt for mill and mining companies (ok, really any industry) using technology in innovative ways and Citic Pacific Mining (CPM), Australia’s largest magnetite mining company, definitely fits the “innovative” bill.

CPM wanted real time location tracking for its 200 transportation assets, including light vehicles, buses, generators and elevated work platforms. This visibility would support greater vehicle utilization, improved safety and lower costs through fuel tax rebates.

As a result, CPM implemented the SAP Vehicle Insights application, an SAP Leonardo product. CPM now has a cloud-based solution that integrates the company’s SAP ERP data with Internet of Things data such as telemetry data from third party tracking devices on the assets.

The CPM project enjoyed a 200% return on investment and only took eight weeks to test, develop and go live. The company is now saving money by streamlining claims for monthly fuel tax credits and has improved the utilization and maintenance of its light vehicle fleet. CPM is continuing to innovate into more areas, e.g. monitoring driver behavior in real time.

For more details on Citic Pacific, check out this story in ComputerWeekly or the Business Transformation Study. Also be sure to check out this white paper on Value Creation in the Digital Mine.

If you’d like to talk directly with other mining companies using technology to drive innovation, here are upcoming events to consider:

SAPPPHIRENOW, June 5–7 in Orlando Florida.

International SAP Conference for Mining and Metals, October 16–19 in Prague, Czech Republic.