Time's Running out! Provide real-time information on commodity use to Barrick and their vendors to ensure critical reagents are on site

Provide real-time information on commodity use to Barrick and their vendors to ensure critical reagents are on site when they're needed to stop productivity losses.

Challenge Description

Barrick of North America spends approximately $296 million per year on bulk commodities to mine and process gold.  Running out of critical reagents results in lost production, additional shipping costs, loss of early payment discounts, and the inability to proper schedule shipments based on just in time deliveries.    Having a real-time system would provide current information without manual efforts to expedite shipments, payments, and help to schedule truck deliveries to minimize the potential of traffic incidents to and from the mine site. 

User Story

To produce gold a number of chemicals must be delivered in a timely manner to keep the process facilities running at 100% production.  Depending on usage at any given time there may be too much or not enough chemical on hand. This causes chemicals to be re-routed or reducing levels of  production to slow the consumption of the chemical.  Variations can be caused by:   forecasted usage estimate is either too high or to low; the process facility has had an operations upset; inclement weather; supplier has upset in their facility and chemicals must be sourced from another company/facility; not enough trucks or trained drivers to deliver chemicals. Once daily at 7 a.m. Monday through Thursday suppliers are notified of tank levels.  This is accomplished via an emailed spreadsheet provided by the mine site.  Additionally, three chemicals that have been determined “critical” are monitored and emails containing tank levels are automatically sent every three hours to the chemical supplier as well as the trucking companies that transport the chemical.

Impact and Value

In 2017, Barrick Nevada lost approximately 4.5 – 5.0 million in lost production on lime alone. 

Mentors

Lead Mentors: Kathleen Avery, Ashley Theurer, Barrick Supply Chain
Tara Rana, Project Manager, Advanced Process Control