Schneider Electric, a global specialist in energy management and automation, has announced the launch of “OEE in a Box”, an innovative, out-of-the-box, consultant-led optimisation solution designed to help mining companies identify and break the key production bottlenecks that are constraining their operations.

Built on Schneider Electric’s operational management software, Ampla, and leveraging the organisation’s deep expertise in the optimisation of production processes, OEE in a Box brings together consulting expertise and optimisation technologies to target high impact opportunities for improvement in the mining production process.

OEE in a Box measures the industry-wide metric Overall Equipment Effectiveness, or OEE, at the equipment or area bottleneck of the production process.  By benchmarking the availability, performance, and quality of the most critical area in the overall process, it enables managers to optimise overall throughput and effectiveness by quickly identifying the key causes of efficiency losses through the process. Availability considers the loss of efficiency related to actual operating time as a percentage of planned production time, while performance takes into account the rate of production in a given time frame compared to expected targets. Finally, the quality of output from the production process is considered in order to provide an overall picture of the effectiveness of the production process as a whole, because ultimately increased throughput can only be beneficial if it also results in increased product recoveries.

Clinton Macdonald, manager of Integrated Planning and Optimisation Solutions at Schneider Electric Southern Africa, explains that, “One of OEE in a Box’s differentiating factors is that the solution is consultant driven. A Schneider Electric mining consultant assists in identifying and confirming the production bottleneck so that when the optimisation software is deployed, it is targeted at an area of the process where it will have the greatest impact.”

The optimisation software is pre-configured based on Schneider Electric’s extensive experience in delivering asset optimisation solutions for the world’s leading mining companies and incorporates industry best practises, thereby reducing the time and cost to implement.

The optimisation software is designed to easily integrate within existing automation architectures and to automatically gather and present information in meaningful KPI dashboards in near real-time, which allows managers to immediately measure the outcome of their decisions.

The key business benefits of OEE in a Box include:
• Increased productivity gains from existing assets by up to 20 percent;
• Increased asset utilisation and equipment uptime;
• Reduced process stoppages and inefficiencies;
• Decreased overall cost per unit of production; and
• Shorter implementation times and reduced costs through a pre-configured and rapidly deployed solution.

With the mining sector facing an unprecedented slump in commodity prices that is likely to persist for some time, there is a critical demand for mining assets to become more productive. OEE in a Box offers companies within this sector a fast and effective way to achieve that goal by identifying highly impactful opportunities for productivity improvements.

For more information on Schneider Electric’s OEE in a Box offer, please visit: www.oee-in-a-box.com