The Challenge

Minesense is a pioneer in digital mining solutions, providing real-time, sensor-based ore sorting for large-scale mines leading to enhanced sustainability. Headquartered in Vancouver, Canada, MineSense has offices and field personnel in South America, Australia and Africa and works with mining customers around the world. The objective of this engagement was to prepare the business for rapid growth and commercialization including the identification of key processes, supporting technology, facility layout, and inventory management practices to ensure that Minesense is well positioned to take advantage of the growth opportunities as they arise.

The Objectives

  • Process Design: Propel conducted a comprehensive review of the current processes within Inventory Management, Accounting and Warehousing. Our consultants worked with stakeholders to map five of their current processes into cross-functional process maps. Propel facilitated functional and cross-functional critique sessions to uncover opportunities for process improvement.
  • Develop Method Changes: 14 method changes were developed that would improve traceability throughout the production process, improve accuracy of inventory, cost control and delivery speed. These changes are ensuring processes that are efficient, effective and scalable for commercialization.
  • New Warehouse Layout: Propel conducted a capacity analysis of the current build and inventory needs of the organization and requirements over three years based on build forecasts. Propel designed a new Warehouse Layout to include manufacturing space and inventory storage to support MineSense with the transition to commercialization.
  • Design and Implementation of Recommendations: Propel designed the project to improve employee engagement through better understanding of the end-to-end processes and prepared the organization for the proposed changes. Actions to address the gaps were prioritized by stakeholders and classified into short-term, medium-term and long-term implementation timelines for MineSense to incorporate with their current/future strategic objectives.

The Results

As a result of the engagement, MineSense achieved process and service improvements through clearly defined roles and responsibilities, elimination of duplicate work and standardization of procedures. With the process implementation, the Organization is able to trace each System through its product life cycle and have single record of through for finances. Overall, this project aligned the teams to support the strategic objectives of the Organization to expand on innovative ideas and heighten their success through its transition to commercialization.