Speaking exclusively to Mining Journal in the first instalment of a three-part webinar series on game-changing technologies in mining, Ventyx director of mining solutions for North America, Dr Will Jansen and Jay Jenkins, product manager in Ventyx’s intelligent mining solutions team, said it had always been an uphill battle to bring technology solutions to the mining industry – “particularly in the good times” – but they were seeing this change.

“It doesn’t hurt that we’ve really started to see the impact of the younger, Generation X and millennials come to the industry with greater focus and demands around their technology experience,” Jenkins said. “This new generation is changing the way we create software and technology and the way the industry relates to it – and it looks to be a positive contribution.”

The industry’s shift in focus toward cost containment and sweating assets, coupled with recent changes to company leadership and objectives, had also led to an interest in technology that could enable these objectives. Jenkins said such enabling technologies underpinned ‘smart mining’

“We also see some mining companies appoint governance groups tasked with adopting or adapting cross-industry know-how into mining,” he said.

“The mining industry has advantages that other industries did not have. We can leverage the 15-20 years other industries spent understanding and then moving towards an integrated enterprise.

By adopting an integration model, communication and data standards that facilitate integration and then selecting and deploying solutions that fit within the parameters of their plans and the standards they choose, they can achieve in a few years what other industries took decades to accomplish.”

Jansen said foundations for the ‘connected’ mining enterprises of the future were being built with investment in mobility – “we in mining are inherently a field-based mobile workforce” – automation, and big data analytics technologies.

Asked how the industry was faring in its efforts to leverage operational data to achieve better financial results, he said there were encouraging signs.

“From my point of view, there have been a number of initiatives that have really begin to pay off in financial terms,” he said.

“Looking at Rio Tinto’s remote monitoring facility set up in Brisbane to continuously monitor and analyse processing data from mines in Australia, Mongolia and the US is a great step towards connected mining, especially with respect to the concept of collaboration. Remote operating centres like this allow experts – a dozen or so metallurgical experts in this case – to leverage knowledge and experience over multiple geographic areas in a more timely fashion.

“According to The Australian, Rio Tinto saved $A90 million using these analysis techniques.

“In maintenance, we mentioned the desire of many miners to sweat their current assets and get more out of what they currently have, which allows you to defer capital expenditure on equipment, etc. So this has led to increased focus on condition-based maintenance systems that rely on equipment sensor data to predict failure in equipment rather than rely on time-based or less optimised maintenance strategies.

“But this approach requires some type of big data platform, again an enabling technology as we get smarter. This has allowed streamlined maintenance spending, capex deferment, etc.

“In operations, we’ve seen automation companies such as ABB achieve great results in the industrial process automation, in mining and elsewhere, but often run afoul of the gap between operational technology and enterprise IT systems. By integrating OT and IT systems, we can leverage more operational data than we otherwise could to drive better financial results.”

An example involved IT systems that usually tracked ore movements and properties, but which were often blind to process control systems that could use this information (grade, hardness, impurities, for example) to better optimise a grinding or flotation circuit in a proactive way.

“We at ABB-Ventyx are especially interested in this application since understanding feed properties of ore and using this in control has major potential for improvements in energy efficiency in grinding, control of carbonaceous material in gold leaching, etc.”

Jenkins said Rio Tinto’s remote operations centre in Perth, Western Australia, was also a sign of change in the industry.

This had been followed by other central operating centres in Brisbane and BHP’s in Perth last year.

“We’ve seen smarter sensors, more intelligent devices, a focus on enterprise software as a competitive strategy – as opposed to a necessary evil – and a more-enthusiastic embrace of technology by chief information officers and their operational counterparts,” he said.

In reference to a question about the potential impact of “actionable insights” gained from “changing the way information is used in mining”, highlighted by a recent Deloitte study, on the ability of some companies to minimise adverse market impacts and take greater advantage of productivity opportunities than others, Jansen said agility was the key word.

“Reducing barriers to access to data and information in of itself opens up worlds of opportunity for a mining company,” he said.

“Only with better operational and organisational transparency and visibility would one have the agility to be more responsive to demand signals from the market.

“Updating mine and production plans in reaction to changing marketing conditions is often like trying to turn a battleship, where as having real-time visibility into your current material inventories and movements through your value chain as well as production schedules over various time horizons in a single collaborative environment is the first step towards production agility.”

Jansen used the example of a mining company’s sales department having an opportunity to sell another ship load of iron ore or coal. They might decline the offer because it didn’t look like there was enough production coming down the line and the information required to make a call on this was flimsy.

“Perhaps there wasn’t enough material produced since maintenance planners took the opportunity to perform some non-urgent maintenance during a period of low demand,” Jansen said.

“With seamless process integration and whole-of-value-chain visibility, the maintenance plan might have been adjusted slightly to gain this extra revenue. There are many potential knock-on effects from changes in a geological model, including changed mine plan which in turn drives changes in maintenance plans which in turn affects required spare parts inventory to support the maintenance.

“Silos are pervasive, but a mine value chain is a single connected ecosystem and big decisions – and opportunities – usually require interdepartmental cooperation, often without the information management system to enable that.”