The new way to operate coal mines profitably

In the globalised arena, coal processing industry faces increased challenges of costs and finding quality manpower for keeping operations at requisite cost levels, including another necessary element of optimised cost to perform at designed capacity. This creates an urgent need for a solution by which, coal companies can focus on their core competency of managing the business, while the operations and maintenance are being taken care of by a qualified partner, who can not only add value in terms of knowledge but also create capabilities to adapt to the variations in feed and production to suit business environment.
 
Traditional vs contemporary ways
Coal mining operations have undergone changes. Given below are a few examples to evaluate how contemporary solutions offer more benefits then the traditional ways.
 
Scope: Supply
Traditional: Customers were buying the equipment on piece meal basis from different suppliers, integrating the same with engineering support from a third party and concluding the plant deliverables in line with the actual production and quality requirements.
 
Contemporary solution: Customers now aim at getting a one stop solution from any reliable supplier. This would mean that the supplier has to be competent enough to design the plant process, supply the equipment along with the system

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Scope: Operation
Traditional: Customers used to build the complete operation team, assign them the job responsibilities, take care of the administration and also manage the IR issues arising out of the employment function. The second version of operation was recruiting a key operation team and out sourcing the rest of the operation to a reliable contractor took care of the manpower management and supplied the required number of manpower as demanded by the customer.
 
Contemporary solution: Customers now increasingly prefer the system supplier who has the competence and the requisite resource to take care of the operation of the plant so that he is free from all recruitment and manpower management hassles by out sourcing the operation and maintenance to a reliable partner. The customer still prefers to recruit a key operation team which can monitor and supervise the whole operation.
 
Scope: Plant performance
Traditional: Performance of the equipment was demonstrated by the suppliers during the performance guarantee test and the same was handed over for continuous production. The customers could judge the ineffectiveness of the performance guarantee model and later on changed to demanding system guarantees which was far more effective in terms of accountability, but the basic bottleneck of non-performance and low availability still hurts the industry and as a result the system is not able to achieve the guaranteed plant capacities on regular basis.
 
Contemporary solution: Plant performance can easily be secured by means of a operation and maintenance contract whereby the operator, who can very well be the system supplier  agreeing to demonstrate the performance parameters agreed during the system supply on a continual basis. The system supplier being equipped to handle the plant operation can easily demonstrate better plant availability and performance on a regular basis.

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Scope: Cost evaluation
Traditional: The basic way to evaluate the project was the initial project cost submitted along with the tender (The OPEX). The cost of operation of the plant (CAPEX) never played a lead role and as a consequence of the same suppliers was able to sell machines which were fit for the purpose, having low initial investment. Later on it was analysed that the cost of operation played a major role for any plant and the initial cost of the machine can be nullified very easily by better performing equipment.
 
Contemporary solution: The basic cost components for any coal washery are the Capital Cost of the equipment (Capex) and the Operating Cost of the plant (OPEX). In any coal washery, the OPEX plays a major role. To ascertain that the cost of operation remain under control the customers have started depending on reliable  performance partners to take of the operation at a fixed cost of operation.
 
All-in-one solution provider
The modern service provider is expected to integrate the whole chain of services like equipment, wears & spares, services & consultancy under one comprehensive package. In other words, it should be a solution provider than just an equipment provider delivering consistent results.
 
One of the most important aspects to providing this solution is having close association with the customer’s operations, which can help get better results out of the equipment along with lower downtime and increased efficiency of the machine and the washery.
 
This involves having a state-of-the-art facility to take care of the logistics and distribution network to create a better coordinate for faster movement of spares, wears and consumables ensuring faster solutions to all equipment & services needs.
 
Providing such kind of a solution and value added services require a well-qualified process understanding, a well-established service network, integrated supply chain management and an organised operation, maintenance and inventory planning system.
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The author is the Manager - Strategic Development, Mining & Construction at Metso India