“They seem to understand our company and the industry. I find them easy to work with, and they’re always there for us if there are any issues – they have time to listen and go the extra mile to find a solution.”
Sam Pynenburg, Senior Control Systems Engineer
OceanaGold is multinational gold and copper producer with headquarters in Vancouver, Canada. With over 30 years of mining experience, OceanaGold has four operational sites – the Didipio Gold-Copper Mine on Luzon Island in the Philippines; the Macraes Goldfield Mine in the South Island of New Zealand; the Waihi Gold Mine in the North Island of New Zealand; and the Haile Gold Mine located in South Carolina, United States of America.
OceanaGold aims to maximize the use of their PI System by accelerating uptake into their mobile fleet and leveraging the PI System to provide contextual information during morning meetings.
Hear Sam Pynenburg, Senior Control Systems Engineer at OceanaGold discuss their journey below, or continue reading to find out more.
THE CHALLENGE
OceanaGold faced several challenges relating to data management and information sharing between operations and teams. For its Waihi site, a critical issue was the use of split databases, where they had a separate Operator Database and Production Database with Access front-end and backend. This resulted in longer processing times and reduced efficiency.
In addition to database challenges, OceanaGold wanted an easy-to-use platform for their morning meetings to display data from different sources in one place and improve alarm management. This solution had to be deployable across its global sites and integrate with its existing technology, such as Power BI, Yokogawa DCS and SCADA systems.
THE SOLUTION
OceanaGold chose Asset Intellect and Alarm Sentinel to address their challenges. It provided an easy-to-use platform for operators, eliminating the reliance on software installed on individual computers. The outcome was a more robust web-based database with an SQL backend that could tie in several different databases, providing a single source of truth for operations and allowing operators to work more efficiently.
For morning meetings, Asset Intellect provides an executive dashboard with multiple tabs from various sources, including PI Vision Displays, SQL Queries, Power BI, Alarm Sentinel KPIs, and external websites. This dashboard allows users to quickly access information from different systems in one place, making morning meetings more efficient and productive.
RESULTS
The implementation of Asset Intellect and Alarm Sentinel has seen numerous benefits for OceanaGold. Operators quickly adapted to the new system, making it their default platform for accessing information. Asset Intellect is now widely used across each Processing Department at the Didipio, Waihi, Macraes, and Haile sites. Integrating various systems, such as Power BI and maintenance systems, has made Asset Intellect a one-stop shop for operations, improving operational efficiency and decision-making.
More than just a tool for morning meetings, Asset Intellect and Alarm Sentinel is used heavily for downtime entry, categorisation, and reporting. The feedback from staff has been positive, with employees offering ideas for improvement, indicating the success of the platform roll-out.
OceanaGold can now easily access information from multiple sources during morning meetings, saving time and improving productivity. Asset Intellect has also allowed OceanaGold to leverage its existing technology and integrate control systems and applications for better data management and analytics.
OceanaGold’s partnership with Dimension Software has resulted in improved operational efficiency, streamlined data management, and enhanced decision-making.
The platform has been well-received by staff and has become a one-stop-shop for operations, providing contextual information during morning meetings and enabling access to data from various sources in one place. With the success of the implementation, OceanaGold plans to further develop and expand the use of Asset Intellect across their operational sites, driving continuous improvement and innovation in their mining operations.
