Benefits and Challenges in Implementation and Sustainability of Mine to Mill

摘要

Mine to mill is one of the most powerful tools for optimisation nowadays. It is an idea widely spread specially in major mining operations with SAG mill technology. However, despite of being a very simple idea, it is in practice very difficult to implement and sustain. Even when the first stages of mine to mill are very succeful, in the long tern, many of them end up failing. A study was conducted to know what are the factors that are involved in the success and the fail of the mine to mill projects in the world. This study was based on data published by the companies in different sources and a survey performed to different people involved in mine to mill, operators, providers and consultants. The findings are that mine to mill is truly beneficial, increasing tonnage up to 15% and decreasing the energy consumption ratio up to 18 %. The main challenges in mine to mill implementation and sutainability are organizational issues such as KPI bad oriented, lack of support on management, political issues, bad communication between areas, high dependence of mine to mill with one person, and others technical reasons such as geotechnical aspects, poor understanding of their own process and none consideration of the long term in the development of the project. The point in mine to mill is to become a philosophy and this is not always possible. As result of this study, it is suggested to implement some actions such as, use of mixed KPI, upgrading mine to mill periodically, involving senior management in all the phases of the project, creation of a mine to mill area, interchange of personal between mine and plant, etc. All this suggestions are product of the analysis of the results of the survey and are important to make mine to mill continue to work in long term.