Machine Learning in Mining Operations

The mining industry is shifting toward digitization, technology like automation or robotics, and Industry 4.0 (or 5.0 depending on what you are reading). Artificial Intelligence (AI), Machine Learning (ML) , and specialized mining software are no longer futuristic concepts. These tools are driving driving intelligent, safe, efficient, sustainable and more predictable mining operations.

AI and ML are often talked about as high-tech concepts, but in mining, their value will come from solving real operational problems. Machine Learning is a type of AI that allows machines to continually learn from data and make predictions or decisions based on various inputs. At their core, these technologies help machines mimic human decision-making, identify patterns in complex datasets, and optimize processes.

AI and ML don’t replace human judgment and data analysis, they augment it, providing insight, predictions and foresight that make planning and execution more reliable.

The Benefits: Productivity, Safety, and Cost

The first wave of AI and autonomous technology in mining came about a decade ago with autonomous trucks. Since then, the potential benefits have expanded. Applied correctly, modern mining technologies allow teams to focus on the right work at the right time while reducing operational risk.

Driving Operational Excellence

Operational excellence is the foundation of the top tier mines. It’s about doing the right work, in the right way, every time. AI and ML have the power to strengthen this foundation by enhancing the core functions that matter most:

• Performance management
• Process optimization
• Strategy and planning
• Continuous improvement

Proven measures like Compliance to Plan, frameworks like Last Planner System, and software like CiteOps turn these principles into action. They allow teams to track execution against plans, identify where work is falling behind, and take corrective action before small issues become big problems. 

Challenges for Implementing Machine Learning

Implementing AI and ML isn’t without challenges. Economic, technological, workforce, and social barriers all exist. Success requires skilled teams, robust data, and a culture willing to embrace data-driven decision-making.

As mining companies continue to adopt digital tools, AI and ML will increasingly become part of the discussions and roadmap. Real-time monitoring, predictive insights, and automated planning will enable mines to achieve higher productivity, safer operations, and more predictable outcomes.

The biggest hurdle to applying AI or ML to mining operations lies in capturing, integrating and analyzing the required and relevant data to support these pertinent technologies.

Technology Investment Making Mines Smarter

AI, machine learning, and mining software are transforming how mines plan and operate. From improving compliance to plan, optimizing equipment, and enabling operational excellence, these tools are no longer optional, they’ve become essential. Top-tier mines are investing in the adoption of smart technologies thoughtfully, and will emerge safer, smarter, and more efficient operations.

AI and Machine Learning in Mining: Why Granular Data Matters

In recent years, the application of Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Machine Learning (ML) to revolutionise the industry has been a hot topic. Many discuss the importance of data in this transition, but few recognise the required granularity to support it.

Since 2010, miners have invested in ERP (finance and asset management), mine planning and FMS (with autonomous capabilities). With planning and real-time data capture covered, a critical gap remains in integrating operational planning and execution data.

The importance and impact of this data, still commonly managed using whiteboards, PowerPoint, Excel or paper, has become increasingly clear.

Mining Activity Conformance to Plan (CtoP) and Its Limitations

Conformance to Plan (CtoP) reporting of Mining Activities often excludes enabling or development activities essential for success. Traditional CtoP reporting highlights issues but lacks context. Operations apply insufficient rigour to managing enabling tasks as is required for effective collaborative planning. For AI/ML solutions to suggest improvements, they require deeper, more granular insight than what traditional short-term mine planning tools offer.

A mine plan optimistically lists key tasks to be completed, and once reviewed with all parties, establishes a baseline of critical path items. These items form the measurable data set for KPIs. However, KPIs and plan variances are diagnostic, not actionable. Supporting data that exposes contributing factors and enables tasks to be scheduled, assigned, executed, and evaluated is needed for action.

Expanding the Mine Plan to Capture All Mining Activities

An effective plan must include all work required to deliver critical path items. It should also recognise the impact of all processes on the schedule. Many sites do not complete this scheduling work, assuming other teams will complete tasks. Mining operations cannot understand true resourcing required without considering all tasks. Capturing this information on whiteboards, spreadsheets or paper hinders future analysis, especially by AI tools needing a data warehouse for ML analysis.

Data that represents progress to plan must be captured. In mining, many critical path items can be updated from third-party tools like FMS. Capturing enabling task progress is complex and requires an IT solution. Operations must compile these inputs from varying sources into a data lakehouse to provide a platform for rules-based and ML analysis. ML can then detect data trends useful for generative, predictive or agentic AI, and support real-time schedule optimisation.

Integrating Systems to Unlock Real-Time AI in Mining

Artificial Intelligence will continue to impact how we view plans and their execution. The key is ensuring all relevant data is captured and connected so ML can identify useful trends, highlight opportunities and reveal issues early.

To support effective reporting and analytics, teams must capture data, and establish relationships in real-time, for rapid decision making. Integrating ERP and FMS with operational execution data will provide richness to power advanced AI/ML.

Capturing Critical Execution Data with CiteOps

CiteOps is an integrated planning and execution software solution. This solution improves productivity by capturing short range plans and executional activities while fostering continuous feedback loops.

This enterprise-grade operational planning and execution platform specifically designed for mining and metals companies enables:

• Unified planning and execution
• Dynamic scheduling
• Centralised resource management
• Real-time decision making and
• Mobile execution

In today’s competitive mining landscape, operational efficiency is key to success. Short Interval Control (SIC) has emerged as a powerful tool for mining companies looking to optimize their operations and drive continuous improvement. Let’s explore how SIC is transforming the mining industry and why it’s becoming an essential practice for forward-thinking operations.

What is Short Interval Control?

Short Interval Control is a management system that focuses on real-time performance tracking and rapid decision-making. In mining, SIC involves breaking down shift activities into shorter time intervals, typically 2-4 hours, and continuously monitoring progress against targets. This approach allows for immediate identification of issues and swift corrective actions, leading to significant improvements in productivity and efficiency.

The Impact of SIC on Mining Operations

Implementing Short Interval Control in mining operations can lead to several key benefits:

1. Increased Productivity: By closely tracking performance and addressing bottlenecks in real-time, mines can significantly boost their output. Many operations report productivity gains of 10-20% after implementing SIC.
2. Enhanced Safety: Regular check-ins and real-time communication facilitate quicker identification and resolution of safety concerns, creating a safer work environment.
3. Improved Equipment Utilization: SIC helps identify inefficiencies in equipment use, leading to better maintenance scheduling and reduced downtime.
4. Data-Driven Decision Making: With real-time data at their fingertips, supervisors and managers can make informed decisions quickly, optimizing operations on the fly.

Implementing SIC: Best Practices

To get the most out of Short Interval Control, consider these best practices:

1. Leverage Technology: Use digital tools like CiteOps to streamline data collection, analysis, and communication. Modern SIC software can provide real-time dashboards and automated alerts, making it easier to stay on top of performance metrics.
2. Foster a Culture of Continuous Improvement: Encourage all team members to actively participate in the SIC process. Regular feedback sessions and idea-sharing can lead to valuable insights and improvements.
3. Start Small and Scale: Begin with a pilot program in one area of your operation. Once you’ve refined the process and seen results, expand SIC across your entire operation.
4. Align SIC with Overall Strategy: Ensure that your Short Interval Control metrics and targets align with your broader operational goals and KPIs.

The Future of SIC in Mining

As technology continues to advance, we’re seeing exciting developments in Short Interval Control. Integration with IoT sensors, AI-powered predictive analytics, and even augmented reality interfaces are on the horizon. These innovations promise to make SIC even more powerful and user-friendly, further driving operational excellence in the mining industry.

By embracing Short Interval Control, mining companies can stay competitive in an ever-changing market, ensuring they’re always operating at peak efficiency. Is your operation ready to take the next step towards operational excellence with SIC?

A high-profile report on technology in the mining sector has identified two of the best investments for mining companies committed to digital transformation. Tech investment in optimised scheduling and short interval control will drive operational excellence. 

According to McKinsey & Company’s 2018 report, Behind the mining productivity upswing: Technology-enabled transformation, mining is reaping the benefits of technological change, and productivity is on the rise.

Technology must form part of a holistic approach to transformation. Tech should extend across every facet of a mining organisation. Companies who invest in tech without a broad, organisation-wide strategy often fail to see the improvements they expect.

“There is no technological silver bullet that companies can buy to achieve their goals,” it states. Instead, transformation depends on the success of three interdependent engines, described below:

1. Harnessing tech

Harnessing digital, analytics and automation technology across an organisation drives productivity, safety, customer satisfaction, and supply chain management.

New technologies help mining companies in many ways, including:

• Throughput and recovery improvement using data and advanced analytics to inform decisions and improve processes.
• Maintenance optimisation to occur when needed rather than on a fixed schedule, using sensors and machine learning. Mobile systems help by giving maintenance workers the info they need while they’re on the job.
• Reduced operating costs through the use of robotics and autonomous machines.
• Boosting productivity by coordinating activities. In underground mining, this has always been a challenge. WiFi or 5G wireless tech on mobile devices allows supervisors to communicate with work teams in real time and adapt plans using short interval control to suit conditions.

2. Adapting management systems

When mining operations implement new technologies, employee operations and behaviour must evolve. New tools, insights and ways of working must be embedded into the culture.

Sometimes, organisational structures must change too. Traditional siloed teams typically lead to “slow and inferior decision making. Each team sees only its part of the whole”. When problems inevitable arise, siloed teams hinder collaboration and cooperation. Critically, these teams remain isolated from the data that drives innovation.

3. Overhauling culture and capabilities

Breaking ingrained habits is the third part of the puzzle. Mining companies must manage a change in mindset, behaviours and capabilities. Managers can achieve this formally or by modelling desired behaviour. Operations should train, retrain and upskill employees, while expanding capability to fill new roles as technologies are harnessed.

The role of better scheduling and control

The report lists optimised scheduling and control as a high-ROI use-case for companies pursuing tech-enabled transformation.

CiteOps and short interval control systems are tech solutions that act across all of McKinsey and Company’s “three engines for change”:

1. Harness mobile technology and analytics to support productivity, transparency, safety and decision-making.
2. Transform employee collaboration by giving teams real-time access to a single plan and tracking progress. This breaks down silos, allows adjustments necessary and holds people accountable.
3. Shift behaviours and mindsets of teams and supervisors through a system based on commitment, trust and accountability.

When supervisors communicate with teams in real time to “react and adapt to changing conditions” an underground mine can function like a modern, sophisticated open-pit operation. Short interval control allows companies to “examine where decisions are made, and by whom.” Teams are empowered to make “informed, data-driven decisions, quickly and safely”.

CiteOps is a product central to the practical digital transformation of the mining industry. We can help you optimise productivity and boost safety at your operation.

The gap isn’t always capability. It’s often commitment. 

Mining operations don’t fail because they can’t plan. They struggle because they can’t or don’t consistently turn plans into fulfilled commitments at the execution frontline. 

Operations invest heavily in integrated planning and short interval control mining systems, expecting them to drive efficiency, predictability, and production performance. Often, these initiatives hit a dead end. MOS Systems are developed, but tools are underused, and frontline teams revert to the status quo. 

Traditionally, a great deal of effort and expense has been focused on large enterprise systems (including enterprise resource planning (ERP), human resources, safety, time and attendance, asset management systems, and others).

Though they’re often clunky, many of these traditional systems are very useful at management levels, to ensure the right checks are in place so that processes are followed, and costs are understood for annual, quarterly and monthly reporting by office-based staff.

Unfortunately, many old-style systems are not very useful for an important segment of the working population: the people who work on a shift-by-shift basis. Instead, shift-based work in many industries is managed using a combination of spreadsheets, whiteboards and paperwork – systems that are unwieldy and poorly integrated.

But the time has come – and the technology is now available – to rethink outmoded approaches to managing shift based work.

Closing the gap

Commit Works’ Fewzion product closes the gap between traditional enterprise systems and the shift-based workforce. It is the “last mile” technology that pulls together all of the critical information required to plan, execute, review and follow up on the tasks across a shift, and presents it in a single, comprehensive view.

The old way of managing shifts struggles to cope with variations such as the availability of equipment and people, or linking safety alerts to planned tasks. Fewzion Integrated Mine Planning and Scheduling Software provides a solution that connects to key enterprise systems to ensure that plans reflect who and what is required and available to complete shift tasks, and include visibility of safety tasks or issues.

The result?

Pre-shift meetings become more collaborative and engaging because shift teams have the ability to influence the plan in a constructive way and, constraints and issues are visible up front.

Post-shift reviews become far more meaningful because all teams can review Fewzion reports and these reports provide a complete view of what was achieved, what wasn’t achieved, and why there were variances.

Digital transformation

Companies can also choose to implement the Short Interval Control app that allows staff to view and update tasks in real time. This can be used as both a productivity improvement and for short interval control, allowing supervisors and managers to see if tasks were done in the expected timeframe and what constraints there may have been. The mobile app allows people to add notes, pictures and documents to the tasks that they are working on.

How CIOs benefit from Fewzion

Fewzion Integrated Mine Planning Software is fast to implement and reasonably priced. Chief information officers (CIOs) are seeing:

• speedy returns on investment (in some cases within weeks)
• vastly improved engagement of shift supervisors and teams
• visible commitment to plans
• increased safety performance
• great productivity gains.

Ready to shift gears? Get in touch with Commit Works today to discuss how Fewzion can revolutionise your business.

Short Interval Control and the Pathways to High Performance Mining

A few nights ago I had a call with Leon Cosgrove from Wipro about short interval control. We discussed the different routes miners can take to improve performance in their operations. Perhaps it was because we’re both involved in the consulting industry but somehow a 2 by 2 matrix appeared as we spoke. See above, we both thought it was helpful for describing the journey to a high performing operation.

On the Y Axis is the extent to which the mine can measure and see where all their equipment is and what it is doing. There is a big range of technologies here. To keep it simple these range from sites with no way of knowing where anything is or what it is doing through truck counts and radio based tools like PitRam up to high precision fleet management systems like Modular, Newtrax or MobileARIS. Telematics and measurement are one thing but getting the data out of the pit is equally challenging. Simplifying terribly, technologies used range from nothing, to radios, to leaky feeder to wifi and daisy chaining to LTE.

On the X Axis is the extent to which the mine is planning and scheduling frontline operational work. On the left are operations that believe that a good mining schedule. Perhaps a maintenance plan can be simply handed down to operations to execute. On the right are the operations who have the frontline management systems and behaviours necessary to describe in short intervals what needs to be done each shift for everyone on the site. These operations engage religiously in the Plan Do Check Act cycle and use variances from the plan each shift, day and week to drive performance improvements continuously.

Three pathways to high performance

With the matrix above it was interesting to think through the different routes to becoming a high performer, we developed three pathways to high performance.

1.Technology first. Many operations have invested heavily in connectivity and fleet management systems. They know where their machines are and exactly what is happening. When these operations want to increase performance, they have lots of high quality data. This is not enough. They still need to break silos and perform short interval, integrated planning and scheduling.

2. Management first. Traditional management operating system (MOS) consultants have done huge numbers of projects with miners. MOS implementation can improve frontline management, planning and coordination. Short interval control is a tool often implemented during these projects. However, without an easy to use and integrated  system (most of these consultants still sell spreadsheets and whiteboards), mature behaviours are difficult to sustain. Operations that use this approach are difficult to sustainably move into the high performer quartile. Tools and systems often break when consultants leave.

3. Management and Technology together. The most direct route to high performer is integrating mature management practices with mature technology. Organisational behaviours are directly supported by – and embedded in – the way the technology works. Critical to this transition is the use of a fully integrated frontline planning and short interval control system. This can connect enterprise planning systems to the operational technology that runs the mine. Done well, this type of project uses mature management consultants to improve management practices while the technologists build a system to support mature behaviours. This approach delivers rapid and sustainable results for much lower cost than option 1 or 2.

Short Interval Control and CiteOps

Commit Works has been working with some of the largest and the smartest miners in the world to deliver massive production and safety improvements. Read our take on Operational Excellence here as we double-down on our commitment to high performance

Our fully integrated frontline planning, scheduling and short interval control system, CiteOps, has delivered 25% to 50% performance improvements in less than 3 months from implementation on mine sites. Many sites have sustained their results for years through management and ownership changes.

Commitment to High Performance

Many mining and metals operations struggle with planning and short interval control. To be successful, operations need a high-trust, high-commitment culture. Leaders should set clear expectations, teams negotiate realistic commitments, and everyone must contribute to practical, outcome-focused plans. When work is coordinated across functions, adapted transparently as conditions change, and continuously improved through the PDCA cycle, change is inevitable. By addressing root causes and using technology to enhance processes and productivity, organisations create aligned, accountable cultures that deliver exceptional results for employees, customers, communities and shareholders.

The mining industry is variable by nature. Mining it is dependent on multiple factors, including:

• uncertainty about the nature of resources being mined
• the changeable quality of a mine’s resources over time
• environments, sometimes remote and extreme, where money has to be spent flying miners in and out
• weather
• market demand for resources
• mining equipment, which can break down as a result of unpredictable stresses and loads on site.

These factors are part and parcel of mining, and are here to stay. The key to navigating variability therefore lies in how we plan for these conditions. Mining’s future prosperity relies on digital solutions that improve productivity.

At Commit Works, we develop our software on the basis that we can out-plan uncertainty using innovative technologies.

Mobile technology: smartphones and tablets

In their November 2015 report, McKinsey & Company identified key technologies that have the potential to manage variability and boost mining productivity. Among these technologies were those that involve human-machine interaction:

“Consumer smartphones and other mobile devices have transformed the way that people interact not only with one another but also with machines. Consumers rely on their smartphones for driving directions, booking taxis, and monitoring their health; applications are also spreading rapidly in the industrial field.”

CiteOps is one such example. Working via an app on a tablet or smartphone, CiteOps Mobile replaces spreadsheets and whiteboards with a comprehensive online shift-planning system that is visible to all teams. It puts the plan in the hands of crew supervisors via their mobile or tablet every shift, so that they become accountable for delivering on the plan.

Monitoring performance in real time

In the same report, McKinsey & Company predicted that real-time measurement of performance against the plan will be a key area of value-creation in future:

“One benefit of real-time data is knowing the state and location of every piece of equipment in a mining operation at every second – and, in particular, whether it is operating according to or outside of the plan. This real-time insight gives new meaning to operations performance management, taking the conversation from one about monthly output to one that focuses on variability and compliance to plan.”

CiteVis exploits this potential by enabling teams to map and track everything on a site, from equipment to hazards to people. This reduces safety risks and improves coordination by ensuring a high level of situational awareness for everyone in a team.

Commit Works also enables real-time performance tracking by incorporating short interval control (SIC) into its our software suite. CiteOps short interval control captures data on shifts at two-hour intervals. This allows project managers, directors and team members to check performance and make adjustments to get back on track if something’s not going to plan. Problems can be picked up early and solved before they become more significant and costly.

Because SIC is based on the idea that we can learn from the past, it’s a system that continually works towards improving future work. Digitised SIC offers a way of monitoring performance that is more accurate, effective, user-friendly and visible to teams.