PROCESS CONTROL
toward highly sought manganese ore . A major expansion project has been ongoing at BRMO to both replace and upgrade existing infrastructure plus install additional capacity to allow the complex to expand production from 3 Mt / y to 4.6 Mt / y in just three years .
Before partnering with Schneider and AVEVA , each of BRMO ’ s three shafts managed its own operations independently from one another . Its control philosophy was largely decentralised , which worked adequately for monitoring and controlling each plant , but ultimately , the system had little regard for holistic business objectives . Additionally , its process control environment consisted of legacy systems and infrastructure with multiple data sources , resulting in a complex integration process . To remain competitive , its system had to change .
“ The road to modernisation and technologies that we ’ ve applied at BRMO had a number of enablers , and one of them was the visualisation , the video wall and the OMI . A place that ’ s easily accessible and speaks one version of the truth ,” said Jaco van Heerden , C & I Project Engineer , African Rainbow Minerals ( ARM ), the 50 % owner of Assmang and the operator .
Driven by a 10 m video wall in a centrally controlled environment , BRMO ’ s stride toward digital transformation provides both mine management and the operational team with an integrated and situationally aware dashboard . The Central Control Room ultimately enables enhanced decision-making , affording operators the opportunity to address challenges proactively rather than reactively , as had been done in the past .
“ What we ended up needing was a total view of our value chain , from the face through to our train loading . As a result of that , we needed everything to be brought under one umbrella that would allow us then to get the full view of all of our infrastructure , all our different plants and mining operations , to enable us to manage the entire process far more efficiently ,” says Yogesh Ramjattan , Business Improvement Manager , BRMO Operations .
BRMO ’ s new system is powered by a suite of AVEVA solutions , including System Platform with Historian and OMI visualisation for the video wall . With its current AVEVA solution in place , BRMO has improved data quality significantly , with some sources improving more than five-fold . Establishing the Central Control Room was also instrumental in BRMO ’ s change process by improving in-shift reporting from less than 50 % to a sustained 90 %. Additionally , BRMO has seen a significant increase in uptime , improvement in safety , and nearly double-digit growth in overall productivity – but it appears to have only scratched the surface of its digital transformation .
IM spoke to Craig Hudson , Business
The IROC at Assmang ’ s BRMO operations in South Africa , where Schneider and AVEVA are helping the operation take digitalisation to the next level
Development Manager - MMM Anglofone Africa at Schneider Electric , the owner of AVEVA , for an insight in the transformation BRMO has gone through . On the wider market he commented : “ People think that the southern African mining market is conservative – I wouldn ’ t necessarily agree with that despite it being a common perception . The whole idea of vertical integration and Industrial IoT is not new to this region and has been around for well over 20 years . What is different today is that we have software platforms allowing us to bring in the data and start to aggregate it and use it usefully . And that ’ s the enabler for true integrated operations .”
Looking at the Black Rock project specifically , he states : “ When they were looking at upgrading
their whole mining & processing facility , which dates as far back as 2012 – they wanted to know how they could take the operation forward into the future . Schneider already had some installed base there , but so did Rockwell and Siemens . They looked at the integration of not only their process control but also power and services . Schneider was chosen to take the project forward and its systems now cover everything from the controls and electrical infrastructure plus with Schneider company AVEVA an integrated remote operations centre has been developed for the three mines . The mines are all within a 5 km radius . During the early stages of the project they put together a central control room for the surface plants and considered bringing all the operators into one space . They approached Schneider three years ago when they wanted to do the same for the underground operations . They already had a video wall in the other control room but it was underutilised as it was just another representation of SCADA data the operators already had with some basic KPI
graphics – we worked with them to fundamentally change the approach . We wanted
to make sure that what was shown on the video wall would also help drive the behaviour of the operators , the production and the business in general . That is what an IROC should be doing . So we made it interactive – the operators still had their SCADA views but now when a KPI goes off range , they can there and then address that KPI with actions which drive the content in front of them . They are now reacting and responding to business KPIs in real time . When the shift is falling behind in production terms , they can drill into the data on that specific KPI without having to call up a shift boss ; then drive the content to show them how to best address that – is the problem underground , is it in the process plant or a hold up in the stockyard ? It ’ s a fundamental change in the way they do business .”
Hudson said that while most mines now have control centres , and many of them also have KPI dashboards with graphs and targets , in this case now the operators are actually interacting with the mining operation and make necessary adjustments . “ We talk about ‘ saving the shift in the shift ’ rather than reviewing the shift report the next day and realising targets have been missed . We also like to talk about on time data instead of real time data – that means getting the right data to the right person at the right time . The operator is more active than reactive – instead of waiting for something to trip , the operator can see for example an impending scheduled maintenance upcoming and take preemptive action to minimise effect on productivity . Of course all this requires new operator training to get them to more fundamentally understand the workings of the operation . In this case the mine has hired a process consultant to help with retraining – so KPIs are meaningful to operators and their impact on the business . Looking ahead by February 2022 , Black Rock will start getting underground mining data into the IROC , tracking machines and operators , understanding drill patterns – they are really looking at digitalisation to help them drive their business .”
Work is also underway at BRMO on digital solutions for personnel management and safety underground . Beyond that , also energy efficiency and management of the rail system . “ They have a base now they can work with and a roadmap outlining where they want to go , and we are helping them with that .”
Concluding , Hudson told IM : “ We took the existing data and displayed it better but we also added new control points and decision points . Overall , we brought their underground monitoring plus plant and personnel systems and sorting all into a single integrated
32 International Mining | JANUARY 2022