INDUSTRY-BASED RESULTS

Mining & Metals firms face numerous complex challenges and opportunities, from commodity price corrections and energy cost escalation to margin erosion and operational execution. As economic cycles shift over time, new generations of mid-level managers and supervisors are facing unfamiliar challenges. Many management team members who advanced in their organizations based on their success in increasing volumes must now grapple with cost-reduction imperatives. The first round of cost reduction is often intuitive, but deeper and lasting efficiencies require specialized methodologies, skills and resources. That’s where The Highland Group comes in: We partner with organizations across the Mining & Metals value stream to achieve and sustain operational excellence amidst shifting market conditions. By helping organizations change faster and deeper than they could on their own, we empower them to stay current with economic trends and imperatives.

OUR PERSPECTIVE

The investment community expects mining organizations to grow value continuously despite ever-changing price cycles. These expectations have amplified the industry imperative for achieving cost reductions, process-variance minimization and margin improvement. To attain these objectives, management requires robust change resources, skills and tools to capture discrete opportunities and ensure operations and capital expenditures meet performance expectations. We see consistent need for operational discipline to achieve optimal performance and meet investor demands.

Simultaneously and globally, operators are being challenged to create attractive and sustainable local cultural and human resource environments. Plans typically outstrip locally available skills, which slows the realization of return on investments and expectations. Moreover, performance optimization often eludes management, in part due to process and cultural disconnects between company ownership and local operations. Projects leveraging contractors face additional challenges, including lack of vision and exit strategies for contractors, service level issues and poor KPI management.

Amid such complexity, many organizations partner with The Highland Group for leadership, focus and discipline assistance in achieving and sustaining their performance targets. Our process begins with improving the quality and execution of the operational or capital investment plan and establishing better, safer skills and execution in the field. We provide a proven, successful methodology that includes essential tools and behaviors, which result in effective collaboration between managers, employees and contractors. We combine these with value-adding technical and domain specialization, from mining engineering and metallurgy to working capital and supply chain management. We provide asset teams and their owners the performance they require via engagements defined by clear Driver Goals, specific business objectives and comprehensive frameworks.

OUR PRACTICE

The Highland Group has an impressive 20-year record of driving operational execution and behavioral change in mining organizations around the world. Over the last five years, we have served more than 25 mining firms, including the five largest global mining organizations and numerous mid-tier mining companies. The Highland Group is a global leader in ground-up performance improvement for the Mining & Metals industry. Across more than 50 locations, we’ve delivered more than US$500 million in P&L benefits, US$1 billion in capital release and more than 500 improvements in safety behaviors and conditions. Our Senior Model helps us achieve these exceptional results: our seasoned professionals bring a minimum of 15 years of successful industry and consulting experience. Moreover, our firm’s cross-sector collaborations empower us to bring new ideas from related industries to serve our Mining & Metals clients.

We work at every level of our clients’ operations, from organizational design to mine operations, and from processing to maintenance. Mining & Metals executives choose The Highland Group as their partner in delivering sustainable operational excellence because we:

• Operate a diverse and experienced global team ready to deploy anywhere in the world
• Offer complete focus and clarity in targeting our clients’ business Driver Goals
• Provide a multi-disciplined, experienced and ready resource for immediate application to our clients’ needs, helping them to overcome internal resource constraints and distractions
• Employ a robust, hands-on approach that leverages only senior consultants who have front-line domain experience and credibility within the Mining & Metals sector
• Deliver significant, measurable results via our proven, proprietary project methodology
• Ensure sustainable change by delivering operational insight to client senior management while engaging employees and contractors at the field-operations level

We have worked with leading Mining & Metals companies across a wide array of commodities, from energy materials to precious metals, including aluminum, bauxite, borates, coal, copper, diamonds, gold, iron ore, lead, nickel, oil sands, silver, steel, talc, titanium dioxide, zinc and more.

Our combination of global experience and local understanding makes us ideally suited to maximize our Mining & Metals clients’ ability to deliver sustainable operating and capital productivity.