A NEW VISION FOR INNOVATION IN MINING
The mining industry is currently undergoing a period of rapid transformation. The enablers are improvements in technologies, a market shift towards more sustainability, efficiency, and a paradigm shift in the way managers envision their businesses.
However, the results being achieved in the mining innovation space to date have been very slow and disappointing. The mining industry has struggled to wrap their heads around whether to embrace this new reality, let alone where to begin. There are far more PowerPoint presentations being given and strategies being assembled than real results being produced with projects in the field.
We attribute this to three primary reasons which need to be addressed:
APPROACH TO INNOVATION
The industry is currently looking for a ‘big-bang’ disruption to the way business is currently being done. Although this might likely happen at some point, a singular fixation on trying to find this is holding up progress. We believe that what is needed is an incremental approach focused on incremental changes rather than a singular, all-encompassing disruption.
ADOPTION
Innovation often means a radical change to the regular way of doing business for an industry that is historically very conservative and resistant to change. Once the trepidation with proceeding with an innovation project is overcome at the corporate level, the brunt of the impact of business changes are experienced on site. Achieving adoption after deployment is critical to success which helps realize the long term benefits rather than producing a short-term white elephant. Change management (communication, training and support), especially on site, is key to achieving this.
Integration AND COLLABORATION
Several different skill sets are now required to tackle mining industry challenges. The technology consultants, engineering consultants and business consultants often can’t fully understand the needs that each other demand. The missing piece of the puzzle is the generalist who can integrate it all to produce a meaningful result in all respects. We are that team!
“The only way you survive is you continuously transform into something else. It’s this idea of continuous transformation that makes you an innovation company.”
WE SEE INNOVATION IN TWO BROAD CATEGORIES: IT AND ENGINEERED SOLUTIONS
Innovation cannot be viewed with a singular lens. Solutions utilizing new advances in engineered technologies, such as ore sorting have as much of a role to play in innovation as IT solutions, such as cloud platforms. In fact, the combination of these poses even greater potential. Our broad background in management, engineering and technology allows us to really provide the bigger picture.
OUR INNOVATION SERVICES
DECIDE TO INNOVATE - This is an essential step in the innovation process. A conscious decision needs to be made by the organizations leaders that they want the business to innovate. Without leadership support for the vision, the effort will likely be wasted.
DEVELOP INNOVATION STRATEGY - An innovation strategy should be created to align with the vision and broader strategy of the organization. This will be your compass along a winding journey. What is important in the long term is that the vision provides direction on the general path to be followed but the specifics of how you get there will vary over time. We can help your team to develop a vision and strategy for innovation.
SCAN THE MARKET FOR SOLUTIONS - We have a library of solutions available to assist with this process. We are also able to perform additional research into specific areas of the market if required.
EVALUATE SOLUTION POTENTIAL - We are able to quickly identify the potential of various solutions and prioritize these by understanding the trade-off of effort versus impact. Once the potential solutions have been narrowed down, we can perform desktop studies to understand the technical issues involved as well as evaluate the business case.
COMPLETE PILOT - Once a solution is approved for piloting, a pilot project is executed to test the solution on a small scale. This might involve a series of agile, sequential style pilots of increasing intensity, depending on the solution type.
LESSONS LEARNED - The lessons learned on each pilot are used to adjust the business case. This will provide guidance on whether to proceed to scale the solution, adjust the approach or abandon it entirely.