End-User

A large coal and heavy minerals mining company in South Africa. The company operates facilities and offices in Africa, Asia, Europe, and Australia. The mine produces 2,5Mt of semi-soft coking coal every year.

Problem

The end user's reporting solution consisted of Excel workbooks connecting to historians for data collection and aggregation. Operators entered manual scale readings every shift. This process proved inaccurate and frustrating with erratic Excel-to-Historian connectivity, Excel file corruption, and human error during manual entry.

Solution

Before looking for a software solution, the end-user created a formal definition for each required KPI. A key takeaway from this process was that each KPI definition included the individual who owned and assumed responsibility for the KPI. The end-user needed a tool to implement their KPI Management System so that business personnel, with knowledge of the business processes, could implement the KPIs without coding or technical assistance of technical personnel. 

They chose Flow Software as this KPI Management System because of the ability to adapt Flow's time buckets to their way of business. 

Their onsite personnel create all the measures (i.e., KPIs) and continuously monitor and share the results. Information is integrated via the Flow SQL Consumer module into a unified data structure for users to consume as "citizen report builders."

Results

With a rigorous KPI definition and sign-off process, the use of Flow as the KPI Management System has ensured information the users can trust. In addition, the Flow system has enabled the KPI Management System to scale and integrate into other systems easily.

Project Info

• 800 events
• 25 000 measures
• Connected to different data sources:
  - SQL Systems
  - Aveva Historian
• The business process engineers use Flow reports to do perform data validation. But users consume the KPI information from a SQL Datamart that Flow integrated into Flow. They are currently generating 20-50 reports, with the near-term estimate being over 100.
• Approximately 3 reports are being sent automatically to users via Flow Mobile, Email and SMS.
• The Flow SQL Consumer module continuously integrates KPI information into the custom Data Mart. Future plans include sending KPI information to the Wonderware System Platform via the Flow MQTT Consumer module.
• Flow templates are employed extensively to ensure KPI standardization and governance. This powerful Flow feature adds significant value to their business.
• Approximately 40 users actively use KPI information generated by the Flow KPI Management System daily. Because there is no "user license," this number is expected to increase soon.