The 2nd International Seminar on Operational Excellence in Mining, Minexcellence 2017 took place between March 29 and 31 at the Hotel Grand Hyatt Santiago with excellent support from mining professionals, and a clear focus on giving more importance to operational excellence,
According to the Seminar Chair and Vice-President of Productivity and Costs at Codelco, José Antonio Robles, even though operational excellence has always been important, today companies are giving the issue greater relevance.
“Given the condition and challenges faced by the mining industry, a real need has been installed in all companies and we are working on how to comply. Operational excellence is a way of life and companies have to make relevant changes to their organizational culture in order to increase it”, he affirmed.
Likewise, the Program Director for Minexcellence 2017 and President and CEO of Flow Partners, Laura Mottola, commented that “this year the seminar showed that people are really taking this issue seriously, and that mining companies are seriously applying operational excellence and are getting results.”
It is in this context both professionals concluded that their primary challenge is to make operational excellence “sustainable” and “irreversible.”
“The great challenge is to maintain the success and motivation of people and to reach a point in which operational excellence is firmly established in the processes, the way of working, in the culture and for this to be irreversible”, mentioned Mottola.
“I believe that at Codelco we have taken a relevant step on this issue. We have achieved the transfer of results from our operational management, by giving a strong look at operational continuity, which is reflected in the results. We have reduced costs consistently in the last year, but now the challenge is to make this sustainable in the long term”, asserted Robles.
Both professionals praised the seminar’s ability for gathering industry leaders and commented that it is important to learn from the multiple experiences shown.
Minexcellence 2017 had over 220 participants, 43 technical presentations from 9 countries, 6 plenary presentations and an inaugural keynote given by Codelco’s CEO, Nelson Pizarro.
During the event, the third version of Minexcellence was launched, scheduled for March 21 to 23, 2018.
