Implementation of the Integrated Digital Platform for Industrial Safety and Occupational Health for JSC “AK Altynalmas”
- Customer
- AK Altynalmas, JSK
- Project manager on the customer side
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- IT Provider
- UCO LLP
- Year of project completion
- 2025
- Project timeline
- June, 2024 - September, 2025
- Project scope
- 10000 man-hours
- Goals
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The project is showcasing how technology and data can drive cultural transformation and accountability across all organizational levels.
The project aims to strengthen employee commitment to a proactive safety culture and to digitalize key Health and safety processes across the company. The key goals are:
1. Enhancing safety culture and employee engagement:
- Transforming fragmented Industrial safety and Occupational health (ISOH) data into actionable insights and measurable tasks;
- Enabling transparent reporting on LTIFR;
- Using mobile devices for real-time documentation and execution of ISOH processes.
2.Building an integrated digital platform for managing ISOH business processes, reducing paperwork, and enabling advanced analytics:
- Implementation of workflows for Behavioral Safety Audits (BSA), Risk Hunting (RH), and Root Cause Analysis (RCA);
- PPE management and corrective action tracking;
- Automated and consolidated reporting.
3. Optimizing PPE procurement and utilization while maintaining quality and compliance:
- Introducing standardized PPE allocation based on normalization principles;
- Creating individual employee profiles to track PPE issuance;
- Defining a data-driven algorithm for PPE demand forecasting.
By empowering employees with tools and analytics, the platform fosters shared responsibility and leadership in safety performance.
The platform seamlessly integrates with the company’s broader digital ecosystem and ESG reporting framework, ensuring traceability and data consistency across business functions.
- Project Results
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The implemented solution demonstrates measurable and impactful results, including:
1. Behavioral Safety Audits (BSA)
- Reduced time for data entry and approval from up to 3 days to 1 working day.
- Improved analytical insights through automated categorization and trend visualization of observations.
- Established a single digital risk registry, accessible in real time at all management levels (100% of departments connected).
- Reduced time for incident registration, investigation, and report approval.
- Enhanced investigation quality via an integrated diagram builder (5 Whys, Why Tree).
- Automated generation of incident reports.
- Standardized PPE provisioning, movement tracking, and demand planning — 100% of PPE data digitized.
- Optimized PPE procurement based on approved norms and accurate digital inventory, expected to reduce PPE costs across multiple categories.
- Achieved a consistently high level of task completion timeliness across all ISOH areas.
- Automated notifications and real-time escalation of overdue actions to responsible managers.
- Reduced reporting preparation time across all ISOH domains.
- Ensured 100% accuracy and reliability of reporting data through automated validation.
- User engagement rate above 85% among ISOH managers and specialists.
The uniqueness of the project
The project unified previously fragmented industrial safety and occupational health functions into a single, process-oriented digital platform. It was conceived and implemented to establish end-to-end business process chains that could be consolidated within an integrated reporting and analytics system. A comprehensive methodological foundation was applied while implementing the platform: The Altynalmas Occupational Safety Management System was transformed into detailed process maps, reference catalogs, and reporting structures to build a robust process-centric architecture. For the first time in Kazakhstan’s mining industry, the ISOH platform introduced an integrated PPE management system, covering the entire lifecycle — from anthropometric data collection to forecasting PPE demand based on actual issuance and regulatory standards, with integration into the SAP S/4Hana system. To support implementation, the company carried out extensive standardization of PPE nomenclature and position- and site-specific PPE norms. A key innovation of the project is the personal identification system for long-term PPE items (summer and winter reusable uniforms). Each item is tagged with a unique QR code, enabling:- personal identification of the user and transparent usage tracking;
- lifecycle monitoring of each item from issuance to return or write-off;
- performance assessment of PPE utilization.
- Used software
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Key technological components include: ·
- UCO platform for end-to-end management of occupational health, industrial safety, and PPE processes;
- Integration with SAP HCM and Access Control Systems (ACS) for employee identification and attendance tracking;
- Integration with SAP MM to synchronize PPE material catalogs and automatically transfer procurement requirements;
- A mobile application enabling full functionality in both online and offline modes, ensuring uninterrupted field operations even in remote mining sites with limited connectivity. The digital platform and developing capabilities provided by UCO company.
Key equipment includes:
- Specialized labeling devices for applying unique QR codes to PPE items, enabling accurate tracking and lifecycle management;
- Barcode scanners for monitoring and controlling PPE issuance, movement, and return;
- Server infrastructure providing secure data processing, centralized storage, and system scalability to support enterprise-wide digital operations
Key components include:
- Integration interfaces with core corporate systems such as ERP (SAP S/4Hana), HCM, and Access Control (ACS), enabling unified data flow across business functions;
- Real-time data exchange mechanisms that synchronize information between modules and ensure operational continuity;
- A centralized data and reporting repository, serving as the single source of truth for analytics, compliance, and management decision-making
- Difficulty of implementation
- The project was characterized by a high level of complexity due to the need to integrate diverse systems and datasets distributed across multiple divisions and production sites. It was essential to establish seamless data exchange between the ISOH digital platform, the SAP S/4Hana system (MM and HCM modules), and the Access Control System (ACS), while also unifying reference data and processes that had previously been managed through local documentation. A significant challenge was the digitization of handwritten PPE records from employee personal cards, the setup of warehouse facilities for PPE issuance, and the procurement of specialized labeling equipment from Europe — all of which had to be synchronized with the development and testing phases of the system. Implementation was carried out under live production conditions, without interrupting operations. This required meticulous planning, a phased rollout of modules, and extensive user training at all organizational levels. A total of 650 employees participated in formal training sessions. Dedicated internal IT support and key users from the ISOH Department were established to ensure continuous onboarding and knowledge transfer for new personnel. The geographical dispersion of production sites demanded careful coordination and resource management to maintain the project schedule. Despite the project’s scale and technological complexity, it was successfully delivered on time and without any disruption to production efficiency, demonstrating the company’s capability to implement large-scale digital transformation initiatives in a demanding industrial environment.
- Project Description
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Before the project launch, the Industrial Safety and Occupational Health (ISOH) management system consisted of fragmented manual tools and local, unconnected solutions that required significant effort for recordkeeping and reporting. This made it difficult to gain a holistic view of safety performance and slowed down decision-making. The project introduced a gradual transition from a document-based to a digital, process-driven management model. The work began with a comprehensive review and optimization of existing ISOH processes, identification of integration points, and definition of data exchange standards. Based on this methodological foundation, a digital architecture was created, unifying core functions such as safety audits, risk hunting, incident investigation, PPE management, and corrective action tracking.
To eliminate “information gaps,” a mobile application was deployed, enabling employees to register incidents and risks directly in the field, even offline. The collected data automatically synchronize once connectivity is restored, ensuring timeliness and completeness of information. Also, a major achievement of the project was the creation of an electronic PPE standardization and tracking mechanism, where each employee has a personal digital card containing anthropometric parameters and issuance history. This functionality improved demand forecasting accuracy and enhanced transparency in PPE expenditures.
Through integration with SAP MM, SAP HCM, and the Access Control System, the platform became a single data management center linking information on employees, incidents, risks, and PPE provisioning. Every safety indicator can now be traced to a specific site, department, or responsible person. The platform has become an everyday management tool, supporting all levels of the organization — from frontline specialists to executive leadership. Automated reporting enables not only event recording but also cause analysis, trend identification, and proactive risk prevention.
The project demonstrated that digital transformation in ISOH can directly improve corporate efficiency. Reduced manual operations, standardized processes, and transparent workflows decreased labor intensity, improved execution discipline, and strengthened control over key safety KPIs. Implementation followed a phased approach, beginning with a diagnostic assessment of existing processes (BSA, RH, RCA), definition of automation requirements, and creation of reference data and reporting templates. Interface design was carried out collaboratively with business users, focusing on navigation simplicity and ergonomic layout of functional elements. In parallel, integration mechanisms with related systems were designed and developed.
A key success factor was the company’s strong readiness for digital adoption, as the business process methodology was already in place and familiar to employees. However, a major challenge was the need to design the to-be automated processes, since business stakeholders were accustomed to boxed software. This required substantial effort in learning development methodologies, testing procedures, and data migration practices. In the PPE domain, preliminary work on standardization and issuance norms provided a solid foundation for digitalization. One of the most demanding tasks was converting over 800 personal PPE cards into digital format and developing synchronization mechanisms with SAP S/4Hana, which already covered procurement, inventory, and disposal processes across multiple interconnected modules. We anticipate that as the quality and completeness of PPE issuance data continue to improve, there is strong potential to optimize planned procurement volumes for certain PPE categories — both through more accurate demand forecasting and the implementation of efficient storage practices and lifecycle tracking to monitor actual usage periods. As for now, the platform continues to evolve and the next solutions to be added are the Operational Surveillance module and the Permit-to-Work (PTW) system.
- Project geography
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Production sites of the company are covered with the main ISOH procesess (BAS, RH, RCA):
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MPC Pustynnoye – Karaganda Region
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MPC Akbakay – Zhambyl Region
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MPC Aksu and MPC Zholymbet – Akmola region
The PPE management has been finalized at the MPC Pustynnoye (Karaganda Region).
These MPCs represent the main production units of the company. The newly acquired sites will be covered in 2026.
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- Additional presentations:
- Integrated Digital Platform for Industrial Safety and Occupational Health.pdf