Advanced Process Control Chats: Mining Industry
A Conversation with Our Team of Experts
Here at Kalypso, the digital services arm of Rockwell Automation, we are a diverse team of innovators, strategists, data scientists + technologists. We’re product people with plant-floor expertise.
Our people are key to everything. For our latest Viewpoint series, we wanted to highlight members of our advanced process control (APC) team. APC empowers process industries to continuously optimize plant operations in a cost effective way to address numerous business imperatives, ranging from reducing costs and emissions to increasing yield and improving quality. Learn more about our team members and how you can unleash the power of your data to achieve excellence in your operations with APC.
Our Interviewee
Kerryn Sakko is a chemical engineer who started her career at a large mine site in South Australia, Olympic Dam as a metallurgist across most of the surface operations. Her career focus after Olympic Dam is process control and advanced process control/model predictive control both in delivery and sales. In her current role, Kerryn is a business manager for Model Predictive Control in Asia Pacific and her focus is the sales and delivery growth of the MPC business.
Our Interviewee
What are the key challenges you typically face in your role as an engineering consultant?
Implementing Model Predictive Control (MPC) projects changes how operations interact with their process. Operators no longer manually control the setpoints they used to, MPC manages these, but the operator instead adjusts the limits that MPC controls within. It’s a different mindset and requires the engagement of all key stakeholders early in the project (and even before the project kicks off) and throughout the project. Challenges arise when the key stakeholders are not engaged and do not understand the benefits of MPC, which hinders its implementation and ongoing success.
What are the most important skills and qualities for success in your role?
The most important skills and qualities for success in my role are to always be open to learning new processes and technologies. To be able to utilize process experience to translate data into bottom-line value for customers.
It’s important to be able to translate process issues and customer requirements into a practical and tangible solution that will address these concerns.
When you meet with a client, walk us through how you approach a problem
When I first meet a client, I like to:
- Talk to them about their process and the challenges they face, just talk about if they have issues getting to nameplate (maximum output of a machine or plant under ideal conditions) throughput or achieving consistent quality/recoveries or if they have issues with different performance on different shifts.
- Focus on a single process area, such as grinding, and talk more about specifics of that process.
- Once we establish what the problem statement is, for example we do not reach nameplate throughput on the grinding circuit, then we collect data to analyze if MPC can provide value and how much value it can provide. We generally access 12 months of data and allow the data and the actual plant performance drive what benefits we can provide and what the MPC solution will look like.
What are some trends you’re seeing in the mining industry?
The biggest challenge that I am seeing in mining and mineral processing right now is resources (both raw material/ore availability and grade) and skilled labour.
With the focus on sustainability, there are key minerals we are going to need significantly more of, for example copper for electric vehicle batteries. It takes time to find and then get a mine producing copper.
We are going to need innovation to be able to find and process ore bodies and process ore bodies with lower grades. As for skilled labor, we will have to rely more on automation and autonomous operations to supplement skilled labor shortages.
What are some areas that clients overlook when trying to increase throughput to process more ore?
When clients look at increasing throughput, they do not always look at the whole picture and what I mean by that is they often focus on mechanical improvements and not always looking at other ways to improve throughput, like APC/MPC. The whole picture involves a combination of the following improvements; mechanical control (including but not limited to APC/MPC), procedural and visualization. In evaluating each facet of the process, the best option in terms of return on investment can be identified.
Kalypso's mining engineering consultants have in-depth knowledge of the mining industry, staying attuned to trends and innovations within the industry to help mining companies achieve more sustainable and profitable operations. Read more about how we help mining with digital transformation. As a bedrock industry critical for the global shift towards electrification and digital transformation, mining faces unprecedented challenges. Learn more about how we can help and our work in the mining industry here.
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