What can the mining industry learn from the Day/Night Test Match?

Oooh, cricket!! Urgh, cricket. Whatever your take on cricket is, there's something interesting to be gained out of the recent Day/Night Test Match played between Australia and New Zealand. The match was won in a tense battle inside 3 days with many factors influencing the potential outcomes. Whether it was durability of the ball, the visibility under lights, the pitch designed to protect the ball, conditions changing and the batsmen struggling to handle a swinging, moving ball - there were many talking points. Cricket's administrators were ecstatic about a turnaround in attendance and television viewership. In the end, it's all about the money. So, what parallels can the mining industry draw from this? For me, it's not a matter of where to begin, but where to stop?? Change management, innovation, performance monitoring, adapting to conditions, marketing, and profits.

With slumping commodity prices, flagging morale, and prioritising all efforts to minimising unit costs, now is the time for measuring performance, innovation and making change. The naysayers out there tend to be the ones most set in their ways and resistant to change. "Test matches with a pink ball? It's just not cricket" they'd chorus. The same can be said of miners who didn't need fleet management systems 20 years ago, but now selection of the right solution is more important than the decision to have a solution. Just as cricket looked at where it was successful (these days in One Day and T20) and found cricket lover's attended and watched cricket in prime-time viewing slots, the mining industry should be looking to where its success arises. Priorities should include:

• putting maximum tonnes in every bucket and every tray; 
  
• optimise strip ratio and minimising overburden stripping in advance; 
  
• good roads equal more loads; 
  
• focus on loss, dilution, and reconciliation; 
  
• maintenance strategy optimisation; 
  
• pivoting marketing for maximised profit (smaller number of higher quality tonnes vs higher number of lower quality tonnes); 

The list continues. Contact us at Marshall Mining & Engineering Solutions for more...

Once you've identified the key areas influencing your operations success - Measure it. Then test it to see if changes have an influence. This test can be on a spreadsheet, then in application in the field. Just as cricket didn't just paint pink a red or white ball, they spent months and years developing the technology and trialling before culminating in last week's Test Match. Miners shouldn't be changing their marketing strategy without testing that a market exists, or the addition of their new product into the market won't spoil the intended outcome with increased supply causing a fall in price you've assumed would be gained.

Before implementing your intended changes, risk assess it. Manage the change so that it has be best chance of success and sustainability. Do you think everyone would be hailing the Day/Night Test a success if the pitch was a dry, dusty wicket that tore the ball apart as occurred in Brisbane and Perth in the previous two Test Matches? Of course not. So does implementing change require modification to other things that you do? Changing to cheaper heat resistant tyres requires more attention on road maintenance - do you have the equipment, personnel, and skills to achieve this? Best make sure before making the change!

As I have written previously, monitoring and confirming that changes are effective is the critical final step in ensuring the success of your innovations. This should be done, not just in the 'honeymoon phase' whilst implementing a change, but on an ongoing basis. Change without sustainable improvement is just shuffling the deck chairs on the Titanic. Don't go implementing a change if you're not going to back it all the way as the way we do things NOW. All too often, change ends up slipping away and the old way of doing things returns. 

Pink ball cricket has been hailed a success. Change is afoot, and the proof of its success will be seen in 5- and 10-years time when it is part of the new normal. The mining industry has a history littered with failed change. Now, more than ever, successful change will see the industry adapt, survive and thrive so it can continue making a difference to people's lives and the global economy in the decades to come.