Appendix B: Case study $$ Rivai Resources $($Sources: The data and information in this case is based on$,$ and adapted from, multiple sources.$)$

BACKGROUND

Rivai Resources is a South African mining conglomerate with operations in four provinces: North West, Limpopo, Mpumalanga and Northern Cape. Each provincial set of mining operations is a separate operating division of the company. Rivai produces a range of minerals across its mining operations for sale in international markets. Nkosazana Mpilo is the Operations Director at Rivai Northern Cape, the firm$$s largest and most profitable division. Mpilo graduated with a BSc in Mining & Minerals Engineering from Wits University in $2004.$ She went on to earn her MBA from Wits Business School in $2014,$ after which she was promoted to her current role in which she oversees operations at Rivai Northern Cape. Mpilo serves on Rivai Northern Cape$$s executive committee $($EXCO$)$ and management committee $($MANCO$),$ and is responsible for all aspects of the division$$s operations, from high$-$level operations strategy all the way down to ongoing, day$-$to$-$day operations and implementation of operational details.

Because of her unique combination of operational expertise and business skills, Mpilo is often called upon to provide inputs at strategic planning meetings of Rivai$$s board of directors. For this year$$s upcoming third quarter $($Q$32021)$ board meeting, Rivai$$s Chairperson has requested Mpilo to make a presentation on operational excellence at Riva Northern Cape, including in digital operations. The board wants Rivai as a whole to significantly improve its operations and embrace digital transformation. The context to the Chairperson$$s request is that while Rivai$$s Northern Cape division has thrived in recent years, its other divisions have been struggling. Mpilo has compiled the following notes and exhibits for her presentation.

OPERATIONS STRATEGY

The South African mining industry faces an extremely challenging operating environment in terms of global trends, local risk factors and digital disruption $($Exhibit $1).$ Rivai$$s business strategy sets the overall strategic direction for its four operating divisions. At Rivai Northern Cape, we$$ve discovered that good operations strategy is not a linear process of strategy formulation, followed by implementation, then monitoring, and finally control. Instead, operations strategy better thought of $$ and executed $$ as a cyclical process, as an iterative closed$-$loop process, or continuous cycle between the four stages. This is the single most important operations strategy lesson we can share with our fellow operating divisions.

OPERATIONS DESIGN AND INNOVATION We have come to think of operations design in a highly integrated way, in the sense that we carry out the design of mining production processes and the $$design$$ of mining products together, side by side. Mining production, of course, entails mineral exploration, mineral extraction and mineral processing$\mathrm{.}1$ Mining products are the mineral products, co$-$products and by$-$products at various stages of production. You can think of these as our ores, concentrates, mattes and cathodes, of various grades and specifications. We have found adopting the end$-$customer$$s perspective on the end$-$product crucial to operations design. Our customers in the steel industry, for instance, require products of consistent quality every time. It$$s not enough for us to simply produce. We need to produce being fully aware for whom we$$re producing, precisely what we$$re producing for them, and how we$$re producing it$.$ Even the smallest deviations from the customer$$s specifications can be very costly for our customers and therefore, ultimately, for us as well. Although we face exactly the same challenges as other operating divisions, we have chosen to respond with innovation. Mining executives often associate innovation with technology. While this is sometimes the case, there are many different ways mining companies can innovate $($Exhibit $2).$ We$$ve found that there is no shortage of innovative ideas at Rivai Northern Cape. Instead, the challenge has been turning these ideas into significant business results. Good ideas often fall foul of resistance to change, and a failure to understand the whole system of innovations required to make the idea successful. For example, a new mining technology or business process for the mine of the future will inevitably also require additional innovative thinking in skills provision, mine planning, and performance measures. What has also worked for us has been adopting a portfolio approach to innovation efforts where our total investment in innovation is split across incremental, breakthrough and radical innovations. The exact split depends on each particular organisation, but you$$ll sometimes find a $70/20/10$ split being called the "golden ratio".

OPERATIONS PLANNING AND CONTROL Operations planning and control involves ongoing day$-$to$-$day operations decisions and activities. The main decisio