Measuring, Managing And Maximizing Performance Of Mineral Processing Plants

The implementation of continuous quality improvement is the confluence of Total Quality Management, People Empowerment, Performance Indicators and Information Engineering. The supporting information technologies allow a mineral processor to narrow the gap between management business objectives and the process control level. One of the most important contributors is the user friendliness and flexibility of the personal computer in a client/server environment. This synergistic combination when used for real time performance monitoring translates into production cost savings, improved communications and enhanced decision support. Other savings come from reduced time to collect data and perform tedious calculations, act quickly with fresh new data, generate and validate data to be used by others. This paper presents an integrated view of plant management. The selection of the proper tools for continuous quality improvement are described. The process of selecting critical performance monitoring indices for improved plant performance are discussed. The importance of a well balanced technological improvement, personnel empowerment, total quality management and organizational assets are stressed.