Yesterday, SAP SE announced more than 15 members of the SAP Advisory Council for Mining are meeting in Cape Town, South Africa, for two days of in-depth discussions on the processes and technologies that will support and drive the digital mine of the future.
The advisory council for mining is an international group of key mining organizations, represented by their CIOs. Established 15 years ago, the group meets in person once a year in a country where mining is a key industry. This is the third time that this global group has met in South Africa.
Mining companies see digital technology as a key enabler in reinventing business processes that will support efficient operations and sustainable growth.
They look to it to support excellence in safety, health, environment, risk and quality (SHERQ); mutually beneficial relationships with local and national communities and ultimately surpass stakeholder expectations.
A wide range of digital technology is being discussed, including the Internet of Things (IoT), cloud computing, Big Data, enterprise mobility, autonomy, geo-sensing, analytics and 3D printing.
The mining companies will share examples of digital transformation projects that use SAP® software and services, which are increasing productivity, increasing satisfaction of customers’ end users, enabling new business models and providing more ways to drive efficiency.
AngloGold Ashanti, a global gold producer operating in four regions across 10 countries and managing 20 gold mining operations, utilizes SAP SuccessFactors® Learning and SAP SuccessFactors Recruiting Management solutions to satisfy its rigorous demands for agile global deployment.
“In a global enterprise such as ours, the ability to standardize the employee lifecycle across various geographies is imperative,” said Pieter du Toit Ooshuizen, ?vice president, IM Planning and Governance, AngloGold Ashanti. “SAP SuccessFactors solutions enable us to not only manage compliance, ethics and process training in various locations and languages but also internationally to expedite the process of recruiting talent.
In addition to the current benefits we are seeing, we will also be utilizing SAP SuccessFactors solutions to optimize and deploy other existing functionality over the next four years.”
Cameco Corp., one of the world’s largest uranium producers, is actively working with IoT and Industry 4.0 concepts for production loss management. The company uses the SAP Manufacturing Integration and Intelligence application to address some key business issues with the integration of its enterprise resource planning (ERP) data and its control systems data.
“SAP solutions for the IoT are enabling us to solve some big challenges in the area of production loss management at Cameco,” said Mark Leach, vice president, business technology services, Cameco.
“Being able to develop human machine interfaces, transfer data more quickly to data historians and do more sophisticated reporting will help us to uncover process inefficiencies and help reduce the cost and risk of operations.”
PanAust Limited, a copper and gold producer in Laos, has predevelopment opportunities in Laos, Papua New Guinea and Chile. Itneeded a state-of-the-art business and technology platform in place to support process integration across the group while readying the company to fast-track the development of new mining projects and drive down overall costs.
The company deployed SAP Business Suite powered by SAP HANA® software across finance, maintenance, procurement and human resources, including the SAP Fiori®user experience. With the software, PanAust has exceeded its expectations thus far. Benefits it achieved include:
* Reduced shared services and corporate costs 5 percent year over year
* Eliminated the need for 34 expatriate positions in maintenance, supply and management
* Implemented SAP Fiori apps in purchasing and human resources with zero training
“SAP Business Suite powered by SAP HANA gives PanAust a robust and industry-leading platform that is being leveraged to onboard new businesses seamlessly and achieve substantial cost savings across all functional areas,” said Darren Hadfield, group information systems manager, PanAust. “SAP Fiori increased user acceptance and satisfaction, reduced training costs and provides a powerful reporting and analytics platform.”
Samancor Chrome, one of the world’s largest integrated producers of ferrochrome, which is used in different areas of the stainless steel smelting process, has purchased the SAP Business Planning and Consolidation application to help it focus on business agility in the digital economy.
“The application will enable improved access to critical integrated business information, thereby reducing cost, bettering forecasting, cash management and thus decreasing financial – and operational – risk because of a better view of the future. IT touches everything. Accurate information intelligence today will impact upon the business oftomorrow. But if you add innovation as a key ingredient, IT can shape the future of your business,” said Cuan Kloppers, CIO, Samancor Chrome.
