Automating and optimizing complex coal supply chain systems

BHP Mitsui Coal (BMC) owns and operates two open-cut coal mines in the Bowen Basin, Central Queensland, Australia - South Walker Creek and Poitrel mine which together produce 7 millions of tonnes in coal per year. The two sites are located about 50kms apart, yet share a planning team across both mines.

With one planning team operating across two massive sites, they recognized the need to increase the sophistication and capability of their planning tools to automate processes where possible and improve supply chain efficiency.

• Millions of variables needing to be simultaneously solved across the supply chain
• Plans required to manage the entire supply chain across both sites
• Interdependency between the two mine plans resulted in an iterative process
• Different workflows and processes at each site presented difficulties
• Technical issues integrating relevant data in a readily accessible form
• Planning changes required manual reworking
• Significant key man risk with knowledge and expertise held by a few key team members

Deswik deployed BOLT, a cloud-based supply chain optimization support tool to automate, optimize and centralize the planning process. This resulted in:

• Optimal planning solutions generated in minutes
• Flexibility in configuring customised workflows, interfaces
• Plans that could span different time horizons
• Custom uploaders able to accept a variety of data sources
• Deployment of the BOLT Historian feature to track stockpile actuals (tonnes and attributes) for comparison with projections to validate the planning process across the entire supply chain