Por: Roberto Quispe Pérez y Alejandro Huamanchumo Pinedo, Newmont Yanacocha.

Today's mining industry demands that all companies seek to optimize their processes in order to meet their goals and achieve sustainability.

This optimization of companies leads to constant innovation in the business model, technology and processes in order to meet all the needs of stakeholders.

Innovation involves making some modifications or slight transformations in the processes in order to achieve something new.

Newmont Yanacocha works rigorously to make improvements in all areas, based on a corporate policy, with the objective of achieving sustainability over time.

Based on this policy, the Newmont Yanacocha mine area began to make modifications to its drilling and blasting process.

Given the need to know the location of the maximum hardness of the rock along the drilled hole, the drilling and blasting area was able to modify its hardness mapping in drilled rock, in order to obtain a better distribution of explosive charge per hole. This results in savings ($) in the use of the amount of explosive mixture, a decrease in the amount of vibrations and greenhouse gases per blast and an increase in the useful life of the drill steel.