Production improvement techniques in process industries for adoption in mining: a comparative study

High profitability and customer satisfaction are of supreme importance for any business. To achieve both objectives, an organisation must design a structured approach. To achieve profitability, organisations look to principles of lean manufacturing and techniques such as EFQM, and business excellence. This paper reviews such methodologies across different industries, comparing techniques and elements. Its objective is to determine which methodologies are most applicable to the Swedish mining industry and propose a method to achieve lean mining. To this end, the paper looks at the methodologies of a food manufacturing industry, an automobile component manufacturing company, the manufacturing and service sector, and the oil and gas industry. It finds that the method used in the oil and gas industry is more relevant to mining, even though it has some flaws. Further research is needed to adapt this method to the mining industry.