Eltirus Enable is taking the headaches out of managing multiple quarries for Stevenson.
Supplying a full suite of quarry products from almost a dozen different sites requires a lot of moving parts.
Stevenson, a major New Zealand-based producer, has two quarries (one of which is among the largest quarries in Australia and New Zealand) and a sand plant that supply the Auckland market, two quarries that supply the Hamilton market, a quarry and a sand plant in the Bay of Plenty, as well as five concrete plants.
To manage this requires accountability and transparency, everyone involved in the process needs to know about how much product is currently available, and how much product will soon be available.
Stevenson general manager for aggregates Kurt Hine told Quarry that having the sales team and operations team working hand in hand was vital, which is why the business collaborated with quarry resource consultancy Eltirus.
“We had already been working with Eltirus for planning with some complex mining projects, and we were looking to work with like-minded people with experience in the quarry industry,” he said.
“We wanted to increase our visibility for production performance, improve our planning, and ensure that we could track our stock so the sales team could see what was available.
“Our performance manager, Daniel Topp, worked closely with Eltirus to develop Enable.”
Eltirus Enable brings together vital data from different quarry operational systems, such as weighbridges, mobile and fixed crushing plants to provide a set of secure, easily understood dashboards with a specific focus on being able to standardise the data collection from one of the largest quarries in the region to some of the smaller ones, all with different levels of data and data automation available.
These dashboards can be used to allow a business to better understand how its operations are performing and whether performance is in line with planning.
The system eliminates the need to log in and out of different systems, putting the information in one place, saving time and helping make better decisions.
Stevenson wanted to make the data capturing process as automated as possible to reduce manual inputs and the potential for errors. However, it needed a system that could scale to different levels of sophistication across its operations.
The development process started on one of the company’s less complicated sites.
“The site had a very competent manager who embraces new technology,” Hine said. “We were able to test Enable’s features, automatically feeding in data.”
“For example, sales data is automatically pulled through from the weighbridge via API. The sales team can sales see stock levels through the Enable platform”.
“This said, not all our sites have the same level of automation and we needed a system whereby say production data can also be entered by operators where the plant does not have PLC functionality. This gets the data into the system earlier and is less data entry for supervisors.
“Daniel Topp then worked with Eltirus to come up with templates to make sure we could see what we needed to see. Once the pilot had completed, we then started rolling it out across other areas of our operation.”
Enable has provided Stevenson with extensive visibility across the entire company. The operational team can use data to create forecasts and put production plans into the system.
Hine said certain products that are in high demand – 10mm concrete chips, for example – can be monitored closely. If the yield of this product is usually 16 per cent, the company can quickly see if this drops and find out if there is something wrong.
From there, the operations team can make adjustments to get the yield back to where it should be.
On the sales side of things, Stevenson can ensure the company has enough material to supply upcoming projects.
“One of the great things we soon noticed was that sales information would come in quickly from the weigh bridge, which allowed us to get a metric on the average turnaround time (yard time) it took for a truck to enter and leave a quarry,” Hine said.
“It was unexpected to be able to see that, and by getting that measured, it gave us the chance to influence ways we could get quicker turnaround, which benefitted our customers.”
Because Stevenson had access to live information, instead of reviewing monthly snap shots, the company could find out what “good” looked like. Getting an understanding of the theoretical performance meant the company had a good starting point for benchmarks and further analysis.
Enable provided valuable data that shone a light on production achievements, stimulating questions on why and how Stevenson operates.
Hine said seeing how different parts of the business compared to each other, especially if they were making the same products, allowed the company to start finding new ways to improve its processes.
“For example, if one of our plants that produces 10mm sized aggregate had a higher yield, we could look at the screen settings, the crusher settings, and more, then apply that to another plant to replicate its success,” he said.
Embracing technological innovation is important to Stevenson. The company believes in quarrying for the future, which has given it a strong focus on embracing the latest technology.
Hine said embracing Enable was vital for not only making Stevenson’s operations more efficient but also making people more efficient in their roles.
“If you are considering using Enable – just do it,” he said. “Gaining a deeper understanding of your site can help unlock better sales planning and production yields and ultimately create real value for the business.” •
For more information, visit eltirus.com
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