Advanced Process Control (APC) can transform mineral processing operations, boosting throughput, reducing variability, and improving efficiency. But before you invest, ask: Is your plant APC ready?
Not every site is prepared to reap the benefits of APC. That’s why we developed this APC Readiness Audit: a structured approach to identify gaps, build a roadmap, and prepare your plant for successful APC deployment.
Why APC readiness matters
APC is more than just advanced algorithms. It relies on a solid foundation of instrumentation, control logic, and operational discipline. Without readiness, APC projects risk delays, cost overruns, and underperformance.
Our APC readiness audit ensures:
- Your control systems and infrastructure can support APC.
- Operational teams understand and embrace automation.
- A clear business case for APC investment.
Bottom line: APC readiness is the difference between a smooth deployment and a costly misstep.
Introducing our APC Readiness Framework
Based on decades of experience across mineral processing sites worldwide, Mipac’s framework ensures every plant moves confidently from concept to implementation. Here’s how we do it:
1. Define
Establish the right focus
Before any technical work begins, clarity is critical. We start offsite by reviewing plant details: commodity, process area, and operational ambitions. This shapes a clear Problem Statement or APC Focus Area that guides the audit.
Why it matters: Defining scope early prevents wasted effort and ensures APC targets the areas with the highest impact.
2. Discover
Understand operational realities
APC success depends on more than technology. It requires alignment with people and processes. Through onsite engagement with CROs and supervisors we’ll inspect the plant together and validate the problem statement. This will help uncover control frustrations, manual interventions, and bottlenecks, setting the stage for the technical assessment.
We also review:
- Compliance with operational procedures and control standards
- Reliability and continuous improvement practices
- Metallurgical and control system capability
- Overall plant performance and priority bottlenecks
Why it matters: This step builds stakeholder buy-in and ensures APC solutions fit real-world conditions.
3. Assess
infrastructure & control layers
Strong APC performance starts with strong foundations. Our technical onsite Readiness Audit includes reviews of:
- Instrumentation fitness for purpose.
- Control system architecture and APC readines
- Historian structure and data quality
- Control logic, PID tuning, and auto/manual statistics
Why it matters: Poor instrumentation or weak control logic can undermine APC. This step identifies and addresses those risks.
4. Identify
process control opportunities
Beyond fixing gaps, we look for opportunities to optimize. We analyse loop behaviour and logic complexity to uncover automation potential. This stage includes reviews and evaluation of:
- Loop responsiveness and tuning
- Controller usage and performance
- Existing advanced control elements
- Instrumentation gaps
Why it matters: This step highlights where APC can deliver the biggest gains in stability and throughput.
5. Recommend
and strategise
This stage is where insight becomes action. After identifying gaps and opportunities, we translate findings into a practical roadmap. This stage ensures your APC strategy is tailored to your plant’s unique challenges and operational goals, reducing risk and accelerating deployment.
You’ll receive:
- A tailored APC strategy aligned to your problem statement.
- Control philosophy and logic highlights.
- Instrumentation and infrastructure improvements.
- Commentary on digital maturity and readiness.
- Integration planning and vendor guidance.
Why it matters: A clear roadmap reduces risk and accelerates APC deployment.
6. Build a business case
APC is an investment: our audit helps you justify it. From the insights gained from spending time in your plant with your team we will quantify benefits such as:
- Variability reduction potential
- ROI and IRR estimates
- Cost breakdowns and sensitivity analysis
Why it matters: A strong business case secures stakeholder approval and funding.
Get started here: download our APC Readiness Checklist
or reach out today and we’ll set up a discovery call with one of our APC experts.
This self-assessment checklist is designed to help you quickly gauge your site’s readiness for APC. By reviewing these key areas, you’ll identify strengths, uncover gaps, and determine whether your plant is prepared to move forward with an APC Readiness Audit.
If you’ve ticked most of these boxes ‘Yes’, your site may be ready to begin its APC journey.
If not, don’t worry. Our APC Readiness Audit can help close the gaps and build a clear roadmap for success. Get in touch today and we’ll set up a call to walk you through this APC Readiness Framework and the audit that will get you started.
FAQs: APC readiness explained
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