The Japanese company wants to build an on-ramp to autonomous haulage systems through ‘as a service' offers, and help miners throughout the AHS life cycle 

The key to success in modern mining operations is being ‘smart'. That is, reimagining operations, approaches, attitudes and culture to create a better model for the application of people, processes and technology. One company at the forefront of this change is Hitachi, the Japanese company that has its roots going back to 1910 when it started life as a producer of motors and today is a powerhouse in the digital, sustainability and industrial worlds.

In mining, ‘smart' appears to be Hitachi's watchword and the company focuses on using its digitalisation  expertise in three key areas: what it calls smart operations, smart equipment and smart safety.

Smart operations are about deploying digital tools for integrated sensor networks, interoperable equipment, digital twins and data integration to enable analytics and decision making that isn't dependent on hunch or opinion. Smart equipment is centred on autonomous and remotely controlled systems. Smart safety is focused on collision risk awareness and protecting people on the ground through the use of digital tools.

Michael Boland, general manager of Hitachi's AHS business unit, says it's his company's mission to help mining customers drive towards autonomy and digitalisation, even for smaller-scale operators.

"The capital cost of converting a pit to autonomy is quite high and part of our strategy is to remove that enormous upfront investment," said Boland, who, before joining Hitachi, was a seasoned mechanical engineer, having managed many digital innovation projects at companies including BHP, Liebherr and Idemitsu.

"We're building approaches to take away that capital impediment to entry. We offer the flexibility to pay for anything as a subscription per truck because many customers are not interested in owning trucks or paying for replacement parts. Hitachi will replace that, looking after the entire life cycle, covering planning, deploying, supporting and maintaining operations. We're looking to provide flexibility [via] a subscription fee… ‘autonomy as a service' if you like."

Challenges and opportunities

A major part of successful automation in modern mining is connectivity, says the Perth-based Boland.

"Our solution is basically a supervised robot truck: the truck is smart enough to stop when something is astray but the truck doesn't make its own decisions about rerouting; that's all managed centrally. So you need really high-quality WiFi to ensure communications channels are up. Many smaller companies in particular have infrastructure challenges so we have a commitment for customers to have a quality network across WiFi, LTE and so on for all autonomous haulage operations."

Boland also said he sees culture as a big challenge and that Hitachi can help customers understand change management imperatives:

"AHS or any complex  OT requires a very diligent culture to ensure you can operate it to best effect. If you've got standard processes and procedures, those playbooks have to change [with the advent of autonomy]. If you don't have those structured processes and really good standards around the operational playbook, autonomy will be difficult."

Data versus insights

But the rewards of addressing cultural change are high, not least of which is building a data-driven mentality. Hitachi can help because its operational support experts can share data dashboards and visualisations that support smart, auditable decision making.

"There's so much data around but data doesn't help you: it's about the insights," Boland said. "The challenge is how you use data."

Boland said he sees Hitachi providing a hand-holding approach throughout the AHS life cycle, right the way back to making an ROI-friendly business case ("explaining where you will see value and where you won't") to training staff and demonstrating success through presenting "KPIs to show you're solving the problem". 

The future of autonomy

In the future, Boland foresees more intelligence in the truck itself, including the ability to detect risks and act accordingly because the truck is intelligent enough to detect anomalies in its local environment.

"The future of autonomy is having smart trucks behave a little more autonomously without a server having to make decisions for it," he said. 

Three types of ‘zero'

We began by talking about three types of ‘smart' but Boland concluded by saying that the future for Hitachi is about three types of ‘zero'.

"Zero entry, zero downtime and zero emissions" is becoming an aspirational tagline for Hitachi, referring respectively to capital costs, operational resilience and sustainability. The ultimate goal is "to completely eliminate people from the pit". We're not there yet but autonomy is becoming an affordable proposition for more and more miners.

"Having been on the other side I understand customer needs and challenges that I took on as an implementer of the technology," Boland said. "We are going to close all the gaps to make AHS less of a risk for customers and give them all the lessons before they have to learn them. ‘If you do this this will go wrong. If you do this, you will succeed'."