MES Case Studies - Ampla

MES solutions are being successfully implemented in a wide range of industries around the world, from mining, metals, water and pipelines to food and beverage and throughout manufacturing. Here we summarize how Citect's Ampla downtime and Ampla product reporting solutions have helped Citect customers in the Metals, Mining and Minerals Industries.

Impala Platinum

Expectation on ROI exceeded as Ampla enables leading platinum producer to optimize scope and delivery of plant-wide information.

Based in South Africa, Impala Platinum is one of the largest group metal producers in the world producing around 1.7 million ounces of platinum per annum, which is equivalent to 25% of global production. It has implemented a dynamic strategy to increase throughput volume to 2 million ounces of platinum by 2006 and is investing in a number of initiatives to enhance capacity in the areas of concentrating, smelting and refining.

Ore from its mines is refined at Impala�s Base Metal Refineries (BMR), near Johannesburg to obtain nickel, cobalt, copper, ammonium sulphate and a precious group metal (PGM) concentrate. The PGM concentrate is then sent to the nearby Precious Metals Refinery (PMR) for further refinement to obtain platinum and other precious metals. At the BMR, the company concentrated on improving plant performance by optimizing the scope and delivery of plant-wide information to key personnel to bring about more effective decisions impacting their bottom line.

�The benefits we were trying to receive were to improve our plant throughput, improve quality and try to reduce the downtime. I think we also recognized that we had a lot of islands of data that we were trying to bring together so that we didn�t have that disparate sources of data and we wanted to spend more time analyzing the data rather that collecting it.� Martyn Fox, Manager Technical, Impala Refineries

Solution

Impala BMR implemented a suite of integrated manufacturing intelligence modules, called Ampla, including Quality, Production, Downtime, Metrics, Tracking, Maintenance and Cost. Each module aggregates information from multiple disparate data sources such as LIMS, MIMS and other ERP systems, and presents it as real-time, user-friendly, analytical information on the web portal accessible via the company�s intranet to key personnel. This allows them to make informed decisions to proactively improve plant performance.

Conclusion

Ampla has allowed the Business Managers at Impala to analyze and measure key peformance indicators and take prioritized action leading to: increased throughput and overall equipment efficiency; consistent quality and reduced loss to waste streams. Information is streamlined from the plant floor to management providing a comprehensive performance management tool which has contributed towards realizing just shy of 2 million oz of platinum as compared to the previous year of 1.75 million oz, putting Impala ahead of its 2006 target.

�Citect is helping Impala to achieve our business objectives. Citect has performed extremely well to deliver this powerful suite of Ampla modules. They deliver the right information to the right people at the right time. Management now has a veritable picture of production performance and it has also enabled us now to focus on analysing data so that we can make the right business decisions.� Tim Spandiel, Manager, Impala Base Metals Refinery

BHP Billiton

Downtime Monitoring solution helps BHP Billiton save AUD$1 million over 2 year period

The BHP Billiton owned and operated Cannington mine in Queensland, Australia, is the world�s largest tonnage producer of both silver and lead. With such a massive investment to protect, and long-term smelter contracts in place, the company sought to reduce unscheduled stoppages of their processing plant and achieve savings of AUD$1 million over a 2 year period.

Solution

Citect used the Plant2Business framework as the basis of the Downtime Monitoring solution, leveraging Plant2Business connectivity to publish information, and Citect�s Ampla Downtime module to identify downtime.

This framework helped overcome the usability problems Cannington had experienced with their legacy system, and provided the power to model the plant hierarchy and drill-down into the downtime causes for detailed analysis.

Conclusion

Citect provided the methodology for analyzing the plant�s downtime, for connecting the plant�s multiple servers, and for collecting and analyzing information and making it available in a simple easy-to-use format, thus allowing managers to view the plant�s availability, prioritize maintenance and optimize uptime.

While achieving initial savings of AUD$1 million over a 2 year period, Cannington is realizing continuous improvement that will yield ever greater savings in operations and maintenance, and see steadily increasing throughput of their facility.

Tomago Aluminium

Production Reporting solution improves efficiency

Tomago Aluminium competes globally in one of the world�s most demanding international markets where quality supply and continuous improvement are paramount.

The company produces quality, value-added aluminium products for the highly competitive export market and is the largest consumer of electricity in New South Wales. It is imperative that extended plant stoppages do not occur, as the repercussions would be considerable in terms of cost.

To better manage their facility, Tomago needed a real-time production monitoring & reporting solution that was independent of their SCADA system. This would allow them to keep the facility running smoothly without requiring constant modifications to their production control system, as well as enhancing their ability to comply with environment regulations.

Solution

Citect provided a production reporting solution with Historian capabilities that allowed the separation of the control functions from that of monitoring and reporting. This allows these specific environments to be managed independently, vastly reducing the level of manual intervention required for continuous customization of reports and data delivery to the business database.

Information is presented to key personnel throughout the enterprise via Crystal Reports and ASP pages developed by Tomago and delivered via a web browser.

Conclusion

The production reporting system has added considerable value to Tomago, saving labor costs for report implementation and maintenance, as well as streamlining operations and enhancing emissions reporting compliance.