Emerson Exchange 365

A Q&A with Alan Novak, Director Mining and Power Industries, Emerson Process Management

The Emerson Exchange Metals and Mining Industry Forum will be held on Wednesday, April 2, from 10:45 a.m. to 12:15 p.m.

Go here for more information on Emerson’s Metal and Mining Solutions

What are the major issues and trends facing the metals and mining industry?

• Increasing focus on reliability and a desire to move to zero unplanned downtime
  • Mining is the most maintenance-intensive industry with maintenance accounting for as much as 30 percent of total operating costs. Miners are increasingly looking to technology to minimize unplanned downtime. There is no question that equipment will break and the ability to anticipate an impending failure can have a significant impact on profitability.
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• Shortage of labor (particularly skilled) due to the remote locations of existing mines and the new frontiers of development (Mongolia, Mozambique, etc)
  • Miners are planning to leverage the developing technologies of remote operations and remote diagnostics to minimize the local labor requirements.
  • Outsourcing non-core expertise, such as vibration analysis, rather than trying to hire experts.
  • Moving to autonomous (unmanned) vehicles or alternative methods, such as conveyors, to minimize labor requirements. Emerson is working on Vale’s S11D project in Brazil – the first project to employ a “truckless mine” concept which minimizes the number of trucks but increases the criticality of the conveyors.
• Safety is always a key concern – there is a trend toward “zero-harm exposure”
  • Technology can be utilized to keep personnel out of hazardous or dangerous environments. For example, wireless technologies help keep people off of acid irrigated leach pads, and automated reliability monitoring eliminates manual inspections.
• Increasing scale of equipment
  • Mines are moving to fewer and larger pieces of equipment which makes the reliability of each piece more critical.

What are the biggest challenges/barriers facing the metals and mining industry?

• Declining ore quality. Mines need to process increasing amounts of raw material to maintain the same level of production.
  • Increased processing leads to increased maintenance spending. Things break more frequently and knowing when they will break becomes even more important.
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• New developments in increasingly remote or politically unstable locations
  • Several large projects have been faced with re-negotiation of their national royalty contracts after construction had already begun
• Labor shortages

What are the biggest opportunities facing the metals and mining industry?

• Continued strong demand for “infrastructure metals,” copper and iron
  • There is still a great deal of development occurring in the emerging economies as roads, electrical grids and housing are provided.
• Leveraging automation technology to improve mine productivity and safety

What can Emerson do to help its metals and mining customers?

• Reliability is an important component of mine profitability and safety and Emerson is uniquely positioned to provide solutions in this area.
• New technologies such as wirelessare available which can improve both worker safety and production efficiency.
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• Remote operations and maintenance approaches can help solve one of the industry’s most pressing problems -- labor.
• Emerson’s new Mining Center of Excellence in Santiago offer tremendous resources for the industry. Emerson was also recently accepted into the Chilean government’s CORFO grant program for R&D benefiting the mining industry.

What is your take on the long-term outlook for the metals and mining industry?

• The overall long-term outlook is positive, driven largely by continuing infrastructure investment in the developing world which requires large amounts of copper and iron (steel). Individual sectors will continue to see short- to medium-term boom and bust cycles in new capital investment as commodity prices fluctuate.