Logistics control tower enhances supply chain efficiency for Hindustan Zinc

THE TAT FOR truck movements from the plant to the smelter has halved, reducing the truck movement and thus the fuel cost has also been curtailed

- Abhishek Raval

Hindustan Zinc(HZL), a subsidiary of Vedanta ResourcePlc, India’s largest and the world’s second-largest zinc-lead miner is committed to embracing technology. HZL is well on its way to create the mines of the future. The company is adopting technologies for better resource consumption to gain enhanced metal recovery by digitising the beneficiation and melting process. According to the company, digitisation, innovation and use of disruptive technologies will improve the ore to metal recovery ratio from 81 per cent to 90 per cent in the next three years.

The CEO of HZL, Sunil Duggal, in the annual report of 2018-19 states, digital transformation of mines is a business imperative, with safety being the key driver. Improving safety, productivity, maximising Operational Equipment Effectiveness (OEE) and centralised monitoring are key pillars of the digital mine program being currently pursued. Sindesar Khurd mine is leading the digitalisation journey and the target is to bring all the other mining operations to the same level. An integrated collaboration centre at Udaipur is under development to give a realtime view of all operations, including mining, milling, smelting and other functions. Embracing the digital way of working will make operations more productive and sustainable.

Logistics control tower for better logistics operations

As a part of the efforts to provide real-time visibility and reduce logistics costs, the HZL has also completed project ‘Sarathi’. It optimises end-to-end logistic value chain via real-time movement tracking of key input and intermediate materials being dealt with at the three mines and equal amount of smelters located at different locations.