In the age of volatile material prices and ramped-up production capacity, mining industry is now paying much closer attention to efficiency than ever before. Scania sat down with Mr. V. Ramana Rao, Executive Director of VPR Mining Infrastructure PVT, in India, for an interview on the current challenges facing the industry and how Scania Site Optimisation has helped the operation.

What are the main challenges VPR face in the current mining industry?
As a contractor we see threats in several areas in the current mining industry. The issues of land acquisitions and environmental clearances for our principals for the mines will have an impact on us. Apart from this, the long term future for coal mining in India will also be a challenge as the country is planning a shift to renewable sources of energy. Manpower can be a challenge in the mining industry abroad but not in India. The other most important challenge we have is that we not only have to outperform our customer, but we are also challenged by our competitors.

How do you see connectivity and technology impacting your operation now and beyond?
We see connectivity and technology is a very useful part of our operations in the mines. This helps us to understand what has improved in our operations and what needs to be improved. The use of connectivity and technology in the operations is mandatory and this will improve our operations and change the business. This also helps in making real time decisions which used to happen on a monthly basis earlier.

How much fiscal and operational values have you seen in streamlining logistics on the mine?
Streamlining of logistics in the mine has resulted a great improvement in our operations. It has reduced the idling time of our fleet which has resulted in increase of the total operating hours for our operation. This time is actually a value added time for our operations. We can see that there is an increase in the productivity of our fleet.

Why Site Optimisation?
We see Scania Site Optimisation as a strategic tool for our future domestic and international projects to have a continuous and sustainable improvements. It is important to have a change in mind-set to achieve improvements in any operation and Site Optimisation has brought in the same. Site optimisation also addresses all the above three questions.

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