HOF Citations 2016 Outstanding Innovator - Rick Howes
2016
IN ASSOCIATION WITH
OUTSTANDING INNOVATOR
Rick Howes
Rick Howes, CEO at Dundee
Precious Metals, has a made a
transformational contribution to the
mining industry. His vision is that
mining requires new and innovative
thinking on how the entire mining
asset lifecycle is managed to regain
credibility in delivering the business
results stakeholders expect. Mining companies
should focus on operational performance and
project delivery through attention to detail.
Rick put the first steps in using technology that
creates transparency on underground mining
activities and enables short interval controls
overlying good planning and scheduling.
• A Central Monitoring and Control System
ensures the shift schedule is executed as
planned. Any deviations being identified and
corrected with decision making from a central
surface control room. The concept of Short
Interval Control (SIC) has been introduced
for the underground mining to support the
key front-line decision making and resource
allocation to achieve the maximum results for
the shift.
• Application in the mining industry of the
advanced concepts for production management
and control used in the manufacturing industry
(such as ISA 95)
Rick brings expertise in mining with management
operating systems experience and at DPM
introduced an operational performance project
called Taking the Lid Off that brought together
a number of communication and location
technologies, married to strategic alliances
with equipment and services providers. This
intelligent mine management system provides
real time production management and tracking
in a broader concept for production monitoring
and control. In that way the mining operational
management changes fundamentally. The
success of Taking the Lid Off was covered in
articles in International Mining in 2011 in the
October and November issues.
Howes visionary and practical implementation
of the Taking the Lid Off project included the
following key elements:
• A Management Operating Model that
incorporates the setting of sustainable
production and asset performance targets.
A master schedule of activities is developed
(minimum three months) which forms the basis
for a detailed breakdown and schedule of the
production, maintenance and services tasks.
The measurement of the process performances
and the analysis and improvement are then
used to feed new targets to close the loop and
create a continuous improvement cycle.
• Bringing together a number of recent
technologies and software systems as part of an
intelligent mine management system to provide
real time production management and tracking
in a broader concept for production monitoring
and control. These include:
- Low cost off-the-shelf wireless networks
(Wi-Fi) for underground, as a backbone for
voice, data and video communications
- Inexpensive wireless RFID (Radio Frequency
Identification) tagging for vehicle and
personnel location tracking