First Majestic Silver (
TSX: FR,
Stock Forum) made a move to fully optimise the use of its data chain when the company announced that it had promoted Martin Palacios to the newly created position of Chief Transformational Officer (CTO).
According to the
news release, prior to the promotion, Palacios, had played an integral role in diagnosing the company’s information needs and in the drafting of the company’s mandate to ensure data integrity of its “mining data value chain” since he joined the company in January 2012 as Chief Information Officer (CIO).
The company’s data chain concept deals with the mapping, tracking and aggregation of key data sets from the mining planning process all the way to finished goods and material sales. As a result, Palacios installed and implemented a number of informational systems where key data sets were digitally imported into SAP (Systems Applications Products) audit.
From the start in January 2013, total implementation of the SAP took 25 weeks to complete. Included applications were production accounting and metallurgical balance, Laboratory Information System, Materials Movement, Microsoft Sharepoint, QlickView – business intelligence platform, and lime feed, ore haulage and concentrate scale automated systems.
As the company moves ahead, Palacios will focus on continued improvement and sue of SAP, materials management, mill automation, equipment maintenance and the deployment of mass internal communication tools to connect and align all staff through a series of kiosks installed at all operations.
The transformation is built on a ‘boots on the ground’ vision created by Keith Neumeyer, President and CEO, and initiated by Palacios and company management. The idea is that mining has to become as close to a manufacturing business as possible where small efficiencies in every process improve those processes, making small and large cost savings over time.
Neumeyer commented on the transformation and appointment, “It is crucial to have someone focused on change, as mining operations are demanding, particularly in today's current environment. A transformational shift is required in the mining industry which needs to be based on questioning everything, innovating, improving, eliminating waste and ensuring the ounces that we produce are profitable ounces.”
He then concluded, “I see these turbulent times as a golden opportunity to make hard decisions and bring on transformational change that could be argued, should have happened earlier, but which in reality was much harder to implement during the previous cycle.”
First Majestic Silver was in the news recently when
the Vancouver-based company announced the acquisition of shares of First Mining Corp. earlier this morning.
Shares were up 2.75% on the news to $7.09 per share.
Currently there are 117.6m outstanding shares with a market cap of $833.8 million.