18 September 2025

Industry Partner Spotlight

This story was provided by Micromine, a CIM Industry Partner, and appears in the September 2025 issue of CIM Magazine (view it in flip format here).

How new technology is aligning plans with production

In mining, a well-crafted plan is the blueprint for value creation. But even the best-designed schedules can drift off course once work begins in the pit.

When that happens, it’s not just production targets that suffer. Equipment efficiency drops, sequencing is disrupted, and profitability can quickly decline.

It’s a challenge that even well-resourced Tier 1 operations face. Micromine is tackling it with Micromine Alastri, an advanced open-pit mine planning and scheduling suite that brings tactical and strategic plans together in a single platform, helping teams work from the same page—and the same plan.

Why compliance to plan matters

Compliance to plan is simple in theory: it’s how closely what’s happening in the pit matches what was scheduled. In practice, it’s a hallmark of a high-performing mine—a way to protect the value the plan was designed to deliver.

When compliance is high, short-term decisions reinforce long-term goals. When it’s low, work drifts into less critical areas, creating bottlenecks downstream. Even small deviations can snowball if they go unnoticed, making recovery costly.

Why traditional approaches fall short

At many operations, checking plan versus actual is still a manual process—often monthly, sometimes quarterly. These checks may be based on spreadsheets or summary reports that lack spatial context, and teams may be working from different sets of information.

Ben McDonald, head of open pit mining for Micromine Americas, has seen these challenges first-hand. “I’ve worked with sites that, on paper, looked like they were hitting most of their targets,” he said. “But when we looked spatially, we saw they had mined 66 per cent of a 650-kilotonne target, with much of it outside of priority zones. That might not sound bad, but it had big knock-on effects for equipment and downstream processing.”

That kind of drift, McDonald noted, can happen even in operations with strong planning frameworks. “It’s not that the team isn’t working hard—it’s that without timely, visual feedback, small deviations add up before anyone realizes what’s happening.”

From drift to discipline

Drawing on his years as a mine planner, McDonald said fragmented systems are a major barrier. “In most operations, planning tools are spread across different applications, which means you’re constantly switching between systems,” he explained. “With Micromine Alastri, everything’s in one place. You can see weekly, interactive 3D comparisons between your plan and the surveyed pit, linked directly to both tactical and medium- to long-term plans. That level of integration is a step change for mine planners.”

He pointed back to the earlier example, where work had shifted into lower-priority areas and equipment efficiency suffered. “Once the site began using Micromine Alastri for weekly compliance tracking, they started with a score of just 43 per cent and improved steadily. Within weeks, short-term execution was back in line with long-term priorities, equipment performance recovered, and downstream disruptions were reduced,” he said

With a single, shared view of progress, everyone—from engineers to supervisors—works from the same picture. “Compliance becomes a live KPI that’s visible across the team, so you can correct small deviations before they turn into big problems,” he added.

A change in mindset

For McDonald, the real benefit is as much cultural as technical.

“When compliance to plan becomes visible and measurable, it changes the way conversations happen,” he said. “Instead of asking, ‘Why are we behind?’ the conversation becomes, ‘What can we do now to get this back on track?’ That shift makes a huge difference to both confidence and performance.”

With connected planning tools and consistent feedback, mine plans become more than just a starting point—they become a shared commitment. When execution matches intent, the value built into the plan stays protected.

For more information on Micromine Alastri, visit http://www.micromine.com/alastri.