Why control gains fade
A controller is commissioned against the plant as it was that month. Then ore hardness moves, liners wear, equipment is swapped and practice drifts. The model stops describing the plant. The controller does not stop acting on it, so the gain decays quietly, long after the project was signed off as delivered.
Control is also built circuit by circuit, each loop holding its own target. But the grind that suits the mill can starve flotation, and the classification that looks stable can be what caps the thickener. Tuned in isolation, the value between circuits is never collected, and never measured either.
What we do differently
The controller tracks the plant
The Conundrum process model adapts against operating history instead of being frozen at commissioning, so the controller keeps tracking the plant rather than the plant it was built on.
Circuits are optimised together
Conundrum provides a plant-wide runtime, so sequential circuits are optimised as one system rather than reduced to simplified models that hide the interactions between them.
Your engineers build the next one
The Conundrum Python SDK and graphical user interface let your own process control engineers build and run new controllers, instead of raising a change request with a vendor.
How we engage
Four stages, each of which has to earn the next one.
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Value estimate
A one-page estimate of the benefit range, from a questionnaire and a sample of your data. No charge.
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Data assessment
A desktop review of your historian data: what it can support, where the opportunity is by circuit, and a pilot design.
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Closed-loop pilot
A controller commissioned on one circuit and measured against a baseline agreed before it starts.
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Licence
If the pilot delivers, the controller stays in production and the scope widens circuit by circuit.
Industries
Iron ore beneficiation
Throughput lost to a bottleneck that moves with the ore, and water that has to be recovered before the plant can take more feed.
Base and precious metals
Copper, nickel, platinum group metals and gold: crushing, grinding and flotation controlled as one chain rather than circuit by circuit.
How it is deployed
The Conundrum Platform runs on-premises, inside your plant network. It layers over the existing MPC or APC, or replaces it, and works with the control system already installed. Base-layer controls, interlocks and emergency shutdown keep their authority, and operators move between advisory and autonomous modes with one click and take the controller out whenever they judge they should.
See it on your own plant
A desktop review of historian exports. No site visit.