Industry — Mining
Mining
Mining operations are complex. Production, maintenance, safety, finance, contractors and leadership all need to understand the same picture, but too often the information is spread across disconnected systems and reports.
In Ricky's Words
Why I enjoy working in mining
Mine sites are one of the few places where you can watch a decision turn into physical output within the same shift. I like being on site, walking the pit and the workshop, sitting in the pre-start and then seeing that same conversation land in the numbers. Mining people are direct, they know their equipment better than any system does, and they have no patience for reporting that does not help them move dirt. That suits how I work.
Common Challenges
What we see most often
- Production, maintenance and finance working from different numbers
- Poor visibility across sites
- Manual shift reporting
- Poor maintenance visibility
- Safety reporting burden
- Cost per tonne reporting challenges
- Disconnected systems
- Reactive decision-making
Capability 01
Business Intelligence and Reporting
Mining is a volume and price business: every tonne has a cost to move and a value at the gate. Reporting brings plan, actual, cost and realised ore value into one picture so the pit is run on margin per tonne, not just tonnes.
Examples
- Cost per tonne by pit, fleet and cost centre, reconciled to the finance ledger
- Production versus plan by shift, day and month, with the loss reason attached to every gap
- Realised revenue modelling that combines shipped grade, moisture and current commodity price against mining cost
- Fleet productivity reporting: payload compliance, cycle time and utilisation by truck and operator
- One leadership pack, refreshed automatically, that replaces the shift, weekly and monthly spreadsheets
KPIs that matter
KPI reference for mining
The measures we most often build for this industry, why each one matters, how it is calculated and the bands we benchmark against.
| KPI | Why it matters | How to measure | World class | Benchmark | Typical |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Plan attainment % | Did we deliver the plan? | Actual tonnes ÷ planned tonnes. | ≥95% | 88–92% | 80–88% |
| Cost per tonne | Is the operation getting cheaper or dearer? | Total mining cost ÷ tonnes moved. | Falling year on year | Flat to plan | Rising above CPI |
| Equipment utilisation % | Are available assets being used? | Operating hours ÷ available hours. | ≥85% | 75–82% | 60–75% |
| Payload compliance % | Are trucks hauling to target? | Loads within target payload band ÷ total loads. | ≥95% | 85–92% | 70–85% |
| Margin per tonne | Is the tonne worth moving? | Realised revenue per tonne − cost per tonne. | Tracked daily | Monthly | Not measured |
Capability 02
Data Engineering, Fabric and AI Readiness
Everything you report traces back to how tonnes, hours and costs are captured against pits, fleets and cost centres. We build the foundation so a tonne means the same thing in the pit, in the plan and in the ledger.
Examples
- Bring fleet management, ERP (Enterprise Resource Planning) and plan data into one governed model in Fabric or Azure SQL
- Agree and enforce one material, pit and cost centre structure across every source
- Automate the shift-to-daily-to-monthly roll up so no one keys a tonne twice
- Data quality checks that flag missing loads, negative hours and unallocated cost before they reach a report
- A history that supports forecasting, benchmarking and future AI use rather than three years of spreadsheets
Capability 03
Power Platform and Business Applications
A large amount of mining information still starts on paper in the pit and ends up retyped in an office. We build apps that capture it once, at the point the work happens, straight into the reporting model.
Examples
- Shift handover and production capture apps that work offline and sync when back in coverage
- Delay and downtime coding at the source, so loss reasons are real instead of reconstructed
- Contractor hours and dayworks capture with approval visible end to end
- Pre-start and equipment condition capture that feeds straight to the planner
- Automated distribution of the daily production pack the moment the shift closes
Capability 04
Continuous Improvement and Business Process Improvement
Most production shortfalls in mining are process shortfalls: the plan, the pit and the report disagree. We map the actual cycle and rebuild the routine around what the work needs.
Examples
- Map the plan-to-shift-to-report cycle as it actually runs and find where the time goes
- Rebuild the shift review routine around a single agreed set of numbers
- Remove double handling between planning, operations and finance
- Standardise delay coding and production definitions so results stop being re-argued
- A visible improvement register with an owner, a date and a measured benefit
What we work on here
- Production, maintenance and finance working from different numbers
- Poor visibility across sites
- Manual shift reporting
- Poor maintenance visibility
- Safety reporting burden
- Cost per tonne reporting challenges
What changes for you
- Better site visibility
- Faster decisions
- Reduced silos
- Better maintenance and operations alignment
- Improved safety visibility
- Leadership working from trusted information