Theoretical and methodological foundations of proactive operational efficiency management in mining companies

The study justifies theoretical and methodological foundations of proactive operational efficiency management in mining companies within the Industry 4.0 paradigm. Its relevance is explained by a divergence between the following two processes. The physical volume of the gross value added in the Russian mining industry declined by 1.7% in 2025 with the mining and geological conditions deteriorating measurably, e.g. the stripping ratio at the Polyus Group rose from 1.5 to 2.4 m³/t in a single year, while the coal production cost grew from 2,234 to 3,400 Rubles per tonne. At the same time, the utilization capacity factor of the open-pit excavators remains at 0.45–0.49 against 0.80–0.90 in the record-high months. A hypothesis is made that in the cyber-physical production the measurement costs cease to be an exogenous parameter and become a design variable, which shifts the whole configuration of the in-company control. The objective is to justify a conceptual model combining noninvasive real-time monitoring, dynamic labour rate setting and minimisation of the in-house transaction costs. The methods used include comparative analysis, content analysis of corporate reporting, decomposition of the equipment time fund and theoretical modelling. A four-level closed cybernetic control loop is proposed; control costs are decomposed into measurement, monitoring and enforcement; an observability index and a proactivity reserve are introduced. It is demonstrated that the selective photochronometry detects on average 1.6% of working time losses against 14.0% when recorded continuously at the same facility.