Identification of key performance areas in the southern African surface mining delivery environment

Abstract

Listen

Translate article

The global resources and commodities market has become highly competitive. While southern Africa’s abundance of minerals resources is still unrivalled, the region has lost its dominance in terms of production. The sustainability of southern Africa’s mining industry is increasingly becoming dependent on its ability to manage the performance of its operations well. A valuable tool for monitoring and managing performance is the use of key performance areas (KPAs) – which are those areas of performance that are reflected explicitly or implicitly in the vision and strategies of an organization and reflect its critical success factors. This paper reviews the KPAs in the southern African mining delivery environment. The KPAs discussed in this paper have been identified by comparing KPAs of several mining houses engaged in surface mining operations in southern Africa and extracting those that are common to most of them. Although the authors support the view that each organization should develop KPAs to specifically fit its needs, the study reveals that five KPAs – safety and health, costs, product quality, fleet management, and delivery should form a default list that covers the key areas that any organization should consider when choosing KPAs.