ASTANA – McKinsey & Company in collaboration with the Almaty Tech Garden autonomous cluster fund has launched a Mining Industry Competence Centre in Almaty, Kazakhstan.
Photo credit: ortcom.kz
Being a part of the 100 Concrete Steps Plan of the Nation, this initiative is supported by the country’s government. The official signing ceremony took place on April 20 at the MINEX Central Asia mining and exploration forum, according to the company’s press release.
“The world is currently undergoing digital transformation: the internet of things, big data, and advanced analytics are the hottest topics on the agenda in most technological and other companies, and these are gaining more and more widespread acceptance,” said Jukka Maksimainen, managing partner of McKinsey & Company in Kazakhstan, the press release wrote. “Big data advanced analytics is viewed as the biggest enabler of the next step-change in productivity improvement throughout industries. At the same time, the mining industry needs to have a way to learn the existing Lean tools to improve productivity.”
Maksimainen stressed that catering to mining industry professionals, the Mining Industry Competence Centre will introduce and disseminate innovations and practices and will contribute to Kazakhstan’s economic development.
The Mining Industry Competence Centre is the product of an equal cooperation agreement between the Almaty Tech Garden autonomous cluster fund and McKinsey & Company. The centre is scheduled to open in the second half of this year.
Almaty Tech Garden will provide organisational and legal support and raise operating funds, while McKinsey & Company will contribute in addition to funds expert advice, develop modules, train the centre’s employees and launch its operations.
“The Mining Industry Competence Centre is unique and unlike anything else seen globally before,” stated a press release.
The centre will perform two major functions – “an experiential training facility” to provide training for help in “capturing productivity improvements using innovative international learning techniques” and an innovation cluster as a second function that aims to “develop new knowledge with advanced tools in the metals and mining sector with big data advanced analytics laboratory.”
“The new centre will consist of two value chain components – mining, including full-scale drilling rig for experiential learning, big data capturing and advanced analytics; mining beneficiation with state-of-the-art pilot-scale plant that can be used for experiential learning, technical training and pilot scale technical testing of different type of ores; big data capturing and advanced analytics,” according to a press release.
Potential to add geology and life-of-mine planning to the centre’s offering are examples of the opportunities to further develop the centre’s facilities.
“Experiential training will deploy an innovative approach devised by McKinsey & Company demonstrating the impact of Lean tools in mining industry environment. This approach is already producing results in 15 other centres in sectors other than the mining industry around the world,” explained the press release.
These projects are run in partnership with global business leaders, such as ABN AMRO, Bosch Rexroth and Petrofac, as well as respected organisations and universities like Technical University of Munich.
“During the five-day courses, participants will learn the basics of Lean tools that help to enhance productivity. Statistics show that lean production techniques can improve product quality by up to 60 percent, while generating productivity gains as high as 80 percent and slashing 25 percent off production costs and time,” the message said.
Participants will be equipped to conduct performance improvements in their companies by gaining practical experience in productivity optimisation and thereby contribute significantly to Kazakhstan’s economic future.
The centre’s use of the latest research and data collection methods with the Kazakh mines is its unique feature, having access to “a comprehensive set of industry data across the value chain in Kazakhstan” turns into “a genuine ‘big data’ laboratory.”
“With the help of advanced analysis tools, it will produce focused recommendations to boost the efficiency of individual mining and metals processes and of operations as a whole (by increasing extraction ratios, cutting energy consumption et cetera.) The comprehensiveness of data availability is expected to be unique in global scale thus enabling new kinds of innovations to take place in open environment,” as noted in the press release.
McKinsey & Company is a world leader in management consulting. From implementing transformations designed to secure long-term dynamic development to optimising business processes for rapid gains in performance and profitability, it assists major global market players in addressing a wide range of strategic challenges.
McKinsey, in existence for more than 80 countries, has a vast network of consultants specialising in strategic, operational, organisational and technical aspects of business in more than 60 countries around the world..
The Almaty Tech Garden autonomous cluster fund was established under the initiative of Kazakhstan’s President to attract new technologies and advanced international experience to implement the 2015-2019 State Programme for Industrial and Innovative Development.
