CUSTOMER CASE STUDY

AVEVA software increases operational efficiencies and

reporting capabilities for South African Mint through integrated
suite of MES and production management applications.
South African Mint
Industry - Metals, Minerals & Mining

Goals Solutions
y To enhance production and enable material y System Platform
traceability management reporting and business y InTouch HMI
efficiency.
y Historian
y To optimise inventory control.
y AVEVA MES
y To improve plant availability and overall equipment
y Workflow Management
effectiveness (OEE).
y To reduce manual reporting and ensure data integrity
through formal production accounting. Results
y Achieved accurate production and performance
Challenges reporting.
y Accomplished successful implementation of
y The lack of detailed process information made it OEE reporting to optimise plant availability and
difficult to assess production information accurately. performance.
y With a host of disparate systems in place, it was y Improved inventory optimisation.
difficult to effectively manage processes.
y Plant floor equipment and processes are now
y The existing infrastructure was outdated and could integrated with other systems, including ERP.
no longer be supported by the original vendor.
AVEVA Plays Key Role in Sweeping
Operations Information Management
Overhaul at South African Mint Co.
CENTURION, Gauteng, South Africa –
As the official manufacturer of currency, a country’s
minting facility may be its most important asset. The
history of coin minting dates back to 7th century BC
and has played a significant historical role in the rise
and fall of human civilizations.
Responsible for minting all coins of the South African
rand on behalf of the South African Reserve Bank,
the South African Mint is responsible for the crucial
task of manufacturing coins and planchets, which are
metal disks used to make coins, for both domestic and
international markets.
Established in 1941, South African Mint (SA Mint)
has prided itself on remaining on the cutting edge
of technology in the manufacturing of currency. The
company first established automation processes with
the use of Wonderware software in 1992, and has
remained vigilant on keeping is facilities updated with
the latest technologies to ensure it produces the highest
quality product for the market.
In recent years, the mint’s production team began
experiencing issues with the overall manufacturing
information management system, which was installed
in 1992. In an effort to address these issues, the team
decided to implement a complete overhaul and upgrade
of the manufacturing system.
Rather than take a chance on unproven technology,
the SA Mint chose to implement the latest AVEVA MES
and EMI technologies and strategies to achieve its
manufacturing objectives.
Manufacturing quality, efficiency and security
is at top of list
The manufacturing process at SA Mint focuses on
efficiency, security and tight production accounting,
as well as, consistent product quality and dependable
automation. The company bears a unique responsibility
02
for delivering consistently high-quality products on time
and in large volumes, within an environment that has
little or no tolerance for unreliable performance or lack
of control.
The production process at SA Mint is complex, with key
steps that must be precisely followed to successfully
produce a single coin of currency. While the production
process itself was running smoothly, the real problem
SA Mint faced was the management of information, or
mainly the lack of it. This meant that business continuity
couldn’t be guaranteed, and reporting was a tedious
process which was seldom on time to be effective.
Other concerns were that the existing technology
solution couldn’t be integrated with other technologies
in use, and was based on outdated operating and
database management systems. In addition, the
original infrastructure was no longer supported by the
original vendor.
“After conducting a comprehensive review of
our current system, the management team
concluded that a complete overhaul and
enhancement of our factory systems was
needed in order to meet our objectives. Since
the new system would serve as the core,
or heart, of the manufacturing process, the
team chose to name the project Pelo, which
in Sesotho, one of South Africa’s native
languages, means heart.”
-
Lungile Binza,
CIO, South African Mint Company Ltd
South African Mint
The project team’s goals were twofold: provide critical
material traceability and data integrity, as well as offer
the flexibility to accommodate changes in the SA Mint
manufacturing environment.
“In addition, it was necessary to optimise
inventory management by providing
information regarding product location
and availability. We needed far greater
visibility into our key performance indicators
(KPIs) to facilitate production flow without
compromising control or security. In addition,
we needed to manage important Overall
Equipment Effectiveness (OEE) information.”
-
Lungile Binza,
CIO, South African Mint Company Ltd
In 2010, project Pelo was in full swing, focusing on SA
Mint’s business objectives and process requirements.
The firm’s management team selected system
integrator Systems Anywhere Coastal to manage the
implementation. The company was chosen based on
its track record of successfully supplying multi-level,
decision-support solutions to companies in the mining
and manufacturing industries, as well as, its expertise
in rolling out comprehensive software solutions from
Wonderware.
“The integrator’s presentation of Wonderware
technology solutions showed us their
commitment to a future where model-driven
MES and workflow management are the norm
not the exception, enabling overall customer
success.”
-
Lungile Binza,
CIO, South African Mint Company Ltd
03
Ensuring production of any denomination at
any time
In 2012, Pelo began with the first step focused on
addressing the needs of the Plating Area, which
included enabling production scheduling of any
currency denomination at any time, as well as
ensuring on-time delivery of currency through planning
methodologies such as theory of constraints (ToC) and
lean manufacturing practices.
These goals were achieved by delivering critical
production information to the management team
to identify areas for reducing manufacturing costs
which included replacing existing factory and material
handling systems, and establishing processes to
interface with other systems such as the ERP and
material handling operations.
Next on the agenda was optimising the Plating Area’s
operational requirements. This included facilitating the
flow of material through in-line processing, improving
material traceability to ensure off-loading capabilities
of WIP (work in process) at both the QA stations and
the furnace exit in case breakdown of equipment
upstream. This was achieved by having off-loading bins
stationed permanently on the line.
In addition, the team needed to eliminate storage of
raw materials on the shop floor, as well as minimise
manual movement of the material in and out of the line
and across the plating lines.
AVEVA provides actionable production
management information
To ensure that these objectives were met successfully,
SA Mint needed to track production processes,
downtimes, shifts and run times, as well as monitor the
status of machine and production weights.
South African Mint

“All development had to comply with SA Mint
standards and quality criteria. This was
especially important in the case of validating
manual entries through the 14 InTouch HMI
stations, which display production input/
output and stoppages in real-time. Our team
also developed custom security features
for linking to other systems used within the
facility.”
- MES is deployed across multiple plants or used as an
Paut Kotze,
Software Engineer, Systems Anywhere Coastal
System Platform was selected at the technology
infrastructure for SA Mint’s applications and business
intelligence solutions. System Platform provides easier
system maintenance and management of standards
through its centralised Integrated Development
Environment.
With System Platform, the team was provided
with a collection of integrated common services
including visualisation, configuration, deployment,
communication, security, data connectivity, data
storage and management, people collaboration and
many others.
This functionality enabled SA Mint to build a single,
unified plant model that logically represents processes,
physical equipment, industrial systems and even legacy
systems, making the design and maintenance of these
systems more flexible and efficient.
04
AVEVA MES software manages the production
management information flow for SA Mint by
disseminating production management data to the
plant floor or production facility. It transforms the
company’s production schedule into operational
commands within the physical resources and delivers
feedback to the business system in real-time.
Standardisation of processes helps ensure more
consistent production results. It equips central
engineering groups to build process models as base
templates to reduce total cost of ownership when
enterprise standard.
In addition, the seamless integration of InTouch
HMI provided the SA Mint production team with an
enhanced Human Machine Interface (HMI) that offers
vivid graphics, is easy to use, and provides powerful
connectivity with the plant’s other manufacturing
technology and equipment.
“By providing a single source for software
management, defining deployment and
maintenance of standards, as well as the
integration of third-party solutions, System
Platform delivered on its reputation as a true
comprehensive Industrial Operating System.”
-
Paut Kotze,
Software Engineer, Systems Anywhere Coastal
South African Mint
By improving real-time visibility into SA Mint processes, Accurate data collection and retrieval critical
InTouch HMI greatly improves operator effectiveness to effective SA Mint operations
and increases control of production activities to simplify
Essential production data collected from SA Mint
and enforce standardisation and change-management.
operations is stored for retrieval using Historian, the
Overall, InTouch HMI brings clarity, consistency and
first, large-volume plant data historian to unite high-
meaning to integrated data collected during SA Mint’s
speed data acquisition and storage with a traditional
manufacturing process.
relational database management system.

Advanced workflow capabilities document Historian facilitates smarter business decisions by

cross-company processes
SA Mint also implemented Workflow Management,
which enables it to manage, enforce and
document activities cross-company, replacing
manual processes and paperwork with electronic
workflows. It encompasses everything from routine
operations to escalated responses to critical plant
operating conditions.
Workflow Management differs from generic BPM
software through native integration with System
Platform. SA Mint operators can trigger processes
directly from control system equipment conditions and
process alerts, as well as from work order execution,
quality, performance or inventory logistics events in
real-time.
providing a secure, high-performance database that
consolidates disparate data sources. It also provides
for rapid retrieval of pertinent information used to keep
facility processes operating smoothly.
In addition, the Enterprise Manufacturing Intelligence
(EMI) aspect of the project is not only helping SA Mint
collect valuable decision and management support
information, but also provides access to the areas of
mobile reporting, data analysis and control, as well as
cloud computing.
With AVEVA, SA Mint is able to continuously compute
the metrics necessary to improve plant, multi-plant
or infrastructure performance. It also enables the
company to maintain tighter adherence to operating
goals with near real-time resolution and data access.

“No longer do we have to write multiple scripts

in order to check that something has been
completed. The application gave us drag-
and-drop simplicity so we can easily develop
and maintain workflows while referencing
various databases and SCADA systems. It
also has helped us enforce business rules and
standards, as well as traceability of users and
production.”
-
Lungile Binza,
CIO, South African Mint Company Ltd

05 South African Mint


“The combination of these AVEVA solutions
enables SA Mint to better understand the
impact of planning, execution, staffing and
equipment behavior on key strategy variables
such as quality, performance, material
and energy consumption. These powerful
tools enable us to maximise our return
on investment as well as offering critical
information and insight for more transparency
to the actual cost and profitability of our
operations.”
-
Lungile Binza,
CIO, South African Mint Company Ltd
aveva.com
Synchronising production control system and
business systems key to success
The proven effectiveness of modern process control
principles on the shop floor using AVEVA software have
been applied by SA Mint to drive collaboration between
departments, processes and systems by streamlining
workflow, enforcing business rules and monitoring the
responses of responsible parties.
Embedding workflow software within the production
environment enables SA Mint to implement standard
operating procedures and corrective actions by
structuring repeatable, managed responses to process
exceptions across the enterprise.
This can be especially effective for processes and
workflows that cross organisational boundaries
such as operations, maintenance, laboratories and
other business domains. Based on the success of this
implementation, it’s safe to say that these operating
principles will be replicated across the rest of SA Mint in
years to come.
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