ARTICLE

Optimizing mining and metals maintenance

strategies with predictive analytics
Operational efficiency is a new industrial imperative
Worldwide, the mining and metals industry is using operational data to
improve asset operations and reliability. Many organizations have already
shifted from regular, scheduled maintenance to using real-time insights from
operations data to determine asset maintenance schedules. This condition-
based maintenance approach lowers costs and improves asset availability
and reliability.

While maintenance teams can view a real-time assessment of an asset’s

current health, the assessment alone provides no indication of future
events. Consequently, mining and metals companies are now deploying
predictive maintenance strategies. Predictive maintenance uses historical
and real-time asset data to train artificial intelligence and machine learning
models. Those models then project future outcomes, offering unprecedented
situational awareness, while preventing potential catastrophic issues and
optimizing asset availability.

Converting unplanned outages into planned equipment shutdowns and

improving asset reliability can increase operators’ margin by millions of
dollars. In addition, converting other unplanned downtime to preventative
maintenance further decreases costs by allowing the maintenance to be
scheduled during a lower margin window.
Performance Intelligence brings efficiency to
your data
Traditional maintenance approaches use visualization
and alerting tools while predictive maintenance relies
on advanced analytics. Making the transition can
be difficult, particularly if the predictive models are
developed in-house. Organizations may not have the
data science experience to build complex models, the
solution may not be easily scaled, and data may be
locked away in functional silos. In addition, models
require significant retraining and refinement before they
can be operationalized.
Integrating an enterprise system of record with
mature predictive analytics software can enable
mining and metals companies to overcome many of
these problems and deploy a predictive analytics
project much more quickly. This combined approach
to analytics infrastructure gives mining and metals
operations visibility across entire asset portfolios. It
also enables users to leverage predictive analytics to
proactively maximize operational efficiency, resiliency,
and sustainability–all of which are key outcomes for the
mining and metals industry over the next decade.
Enable the digital twin and empower the
connected worker
Centralizing data management means that mining
and metals companies can accelerate the time-
to-insight for operations, maintenance, planners,
business analysts, and more. The single system of
record becomes a digital thread that connects all the
devices monitoring asset performance with a predictive
analytics engine. It is the foundation for many different
projects, from predictive and prescriptive maintenance
of a single asset, tocreating a digital twin of an entire
asset portfolio. Staff no longer have to track down
performance data in disparate systems and manually
upload it to analytics software. They do not have to be
software developers or data scientists to start gaining
insights from operational data.
Instead, anyone stakeholder can immediately analyze
operational data from across the enterprise. For
example, maintenance teams can start a condition-
based maintenance project using mature analytics from
a single source of reliable operations data.
2 Optimizing mining and metals maintenance strategies
Barrick Gold: Turning operations data into a
gold mine of insights
Headquartered in Toronto, Canada, Barrick Gold is one
of the largest gold mining companies in the world. With
mines in 11 countries, Barrick creates a wealth of data
across the enterprise.
Extracting and refining gold in Barrick’s Cortez mine in
Nevada is a laborious, mechanically intensive process.
Machinery is expensive and so is downtime caused by
any mechanical failure. To mitigate these costs, Cortez
invested in a predictive maintenance strategy using the
AVEVA PI System. The mine deployed a mixture of IIoT,
data analytics, sensors, and machine learning tools
to detect potential equipment problems before they
reached the failure point.
Barrick uses sensors and vibration monitoring software
from Petasense IIoT sensors to gather information from
assets that are not inherently IoT-enabled. Machine
learning algorithms use frequently collected sensor
data to generate an equipment health score and track
declines that indicate a potential problem.
Site engineers use PI System tools to integrate
Petasense data with other sources and to provide
clear, intuitive access to that data for a variety of
users. The first potential defect was identified within a
month, and a single early fault detection for one piece
of equipment saved the company $600,000. Overall,
predictive maintenance has enabled the mine to reduce
unplanned downtime and repair costs and improve the
overall efficiency process.
Votorantim Cementos: Predictive insights
optimize operations
AVEVA Predictive Analytics provides early warning of
equipment failure and abnormal operating conditions
that may go unnoticed with traditional maintenance
practices. Votorantim Cementos, a Brazilian cement
manufacturer, wanted to move from reactive to
predictive maintenance strategies. The company
selected AVEVA Predictive Analytics because it created
a single source of reliable data and information and
enabled machine learning-based insights. The solution
was deployed on top of Votoranitim Cimentos’ existing
AVEVA PI System.
with predictive analytics
After a rapid deployment, the company quickly began
to see the benefits of predictive maintenance. Across
six sites, predictive-analysis driven “catches” avoided
$23 million in corrective maintenance costs per site
in the first year alone. Over time, AVEVA Predictive
Analytics enabled the team to not only manage
immediate maintenance needs, but also plan and scale
processes, when needed, to minimize operational risk
and unscheduled downtime.
Overall, the company reduced its maintenance-related
costs while improving asset reliability and virtually
eliminating the need to make emergency purchases.
Using AVEVA Predictive Analytics, Votorantim
Cimentos cut its maintenance backlog by 10%,
boosted asset reliability by 6%, and enabled
comparative analysis between plants to share and
promote best practices.

For more information about Predictive Analytics, please visit:

aveva.com/en/products/predictive-analytics

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