As Albert Einstein once said, “necessity is the mother of invention” and in the field of minerals processing, there can be no better example than the creation of MillROC – a consulting system exclusively available to Orway clients.
Over Orway's long history of optimising comminution circuits, it became evident that training of client teams and timely implementation were as crucial as identifying solutions. This inspired the development of MillROC, which stands for Remote Optimisation Consulting & Coaching, in 2018 to improve implementation and reduce the opportunity losses between optimisations. Soon after, global travel restrictions, as a result of the Coronavirus pandemic, made it practically impossible for Orway's consulting team to travel to sites to collect data and provide on-ground advice directly to the operational team. Essentially, MillROC became a crucial tool for many of our clients.
MillROC allows clients to benefit from the same level of access to Orway's team of consultants via an online system that enables performance monitoring data to be relayed from almost any mine site in the world to Orway's highly experienced consultants.
The primary focus of MillROC is comminution, which is the largest economic lever, other than feed grade. However, upstream and downstream data is just as easily integrated for full plant optimisation.
“Knowledge is Power and Shared Knowledge is Power Multiplied.”
Optimisation is an ongoing process that is highly successful when there is a collaborative, transparent relationship with a flow of data and knowledge between the site's operations team, the corporate team, suppliers and consultants over a longterm period.
With MillROC, operating data is collected in real-time, feeding into live circuit mass balances, proprietary models, data filtering and analysis tools, including machine learning techniques. This provides a condensed overview of the circuit performance and allows our team to identify problem areas and recommend optimisation changes or strategies to the site operations team on the ground. It also provides transparency, allowing operators, consultants and the corporate team to view the same data via the web interface.
This system enables ongoing support and feedback to the operations team to ensure the circuit is running efficiently and maximising throughput at all times, facilitating continual improvement of the operation in terms of stability, efficiency and maximising equipment life.
MillROC is offered through a joint venture company, OrwayIQ, combining the skills of Orway and our partner Process IQ. Watch the video below to find out how the MillROC solution can assist you and your onsite teams.
Contact us today to find out how the MillROC solution can assist you and your onsite teams.