At Electra Mining 2016, Schneider Electric focused on sustainability in mining. Motion Control’s editor caught up with country president, Eric Léger and strategic account executive – Africa Mining, Darryl Opie to find out more about the implications of this strategy.
Motion Control: Mining is a very difficult sector to operate in. What are the challenges and how is Schneider Electric meeting them?
Léger: Two and a half years ago we set up an organisation here in South Africa with a mandate to develop core competencies that could serve the whole of Africa. This included skills such as design engineering, project management, tendering teams, software specialists and other specialist services. It has enabled us to spread our exposure so that we are not dependent only on South Africa and it has been very successful.
Opie: There is currently no large capex happening in southern Africa so we have aligned ourselves with the requirements of the mining sector and looked at CSI, process optimisation and energy optimisation as these are the areas where the mines are focusing. As Anglo American’s Mark Cutifani said, “Our mines are going to be the best, not the biggest.” The question is how to sweat your assets and improve your profitability through maintenance, workflow and supply chain optimisation.
Motion Control: What in your view is the outlook for the mining industry?
Léger: There are fewer new projects now so we are focusing on further optimisation, while exploration also continues. We are growing into Africa and looking at new opportunities and we are optimistic that there will be an end to the downward cycle.
Opie: There is a major trend towards urbanisation and the associated population growth. The requirement for raw materials is growing and we need to be ready for this. There is a long-term upward trend in commodities and capacities are going to increase. This will bring profitability to the industry – everybody is optimising now so that they are ready for the upturn.
Motion Control: What are your mining solutions?
Léger: Schneider Electric solutions for the South African mining sector comprise communication and digital control systems, power supply, equipment power systems, process control through variable speed drives, especially the Altivar 1200, and our innovative and compact medium voltage drives. All of these embody the ethos of sustainability in mining.
Opie: Apart from launching the Altivar 1200, we also have compact medium voltage switchgear energy solutions that are quite revolutionary. On the software side we have ScimSci which offers advanced process control and operator training simulators (OTS). For example a customer on the mine can determine unscheduled downtime due to operator inefficiency and then put a value to this and channel investment into operator training.
Motion Control: Today we are covering the mining sector, but what are your other target markets?
Léger: Although Schneider Electric services 12 target markets worldwide, in South Africa we have selected four segments on which to focus our energy. These are mining, metals and minerals (MMM), wastewater and treatment, food and beverage, and cloud services (data centres).
Motion Control: How does Schneider South Africa fit into the global Schneider vision?
Léger: Schneider is a very large organisation so it operates at the corporate and the local level. We operate autonomously within the global Schneider strategy. Different countries have different cultures and we are able to adapt our business strategy to the local business culture. So we are able to be relevant and specialise in the segments that suit each particular business culture. If we did not do that we would be trying to do too much and would have poor execution in too many niches.
Motion Control: You presented the Schneider strategy in April 2015. What has your progress been in implementing it?
Léger: We have launched our Vision 2020 – internally for now. In short we look at our business from two angles: Firstly, we aim to stabilise and strengthen what we do well, and secondly we adapt and accelerate – new segments, new geography, new initiatives. We have promoted three enablers to the executive. The first is personal: as an organisation we centre on the customer and every employee makes a more emotional and personalised contribution to the experience of the customer. Secondly, when we talk to people our slogan is UP: step UP, warm UP, thumbs UP – an initiative to create more engagement. Thirdly, it is through our processes that we are able to be at our very best in terms of execution discipline, cooperation and that A to Z from finance to supply chain to commercial teams – our house is in order.
For more information contact Lebohang Thokoane, Schneider Electric SA, +27 (0)11 254 6400, [email protected], www.schneider-electric.com
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