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INTERNET OF THINGS
improve our efficiency by shortening the gap
between planning and execution.”
Sanchez said the company is now pursuing
Hexagon’s safety technologies for further
integration. “We are in a constant search for
optimisation and key technologies,” said
Sanchez. “Upon installation of the Jigsaw system
for our communications, we have also worked
with Hexagon to add mobility and to be able to
transmit HD-quality video with 100% guarantee.
We currently offer seven applications on the
same platform such as radar control, pump
systems, video systems, etc. All of this is
integrated in a single platform, thanks to modern
technology by Hexagon Mining. We are very
happy with these systems.”
Sanchez added that the company is also
impressed by the IDS Interferometric Mine Slope
Radar, a revolutionary remote sensing monitoring
system offered by Hexagon Mining. “With one
radar, we could achieve 360° coverage for
monitoring the profile of the mine within one
plan,” said Sanchez. “Aside from the 360° view,
the system is portable so we do not need to
install electricity or additional construction for
the equipment.”
Hexagon concludes: “Industry-wide,
operational staff and managers are increasingly
being overwhelmed with huge volumes of data
from multiple sources, much of it in real time. As
data is collected, and distributed to various
systems at the mine, it is replicated and
massaged before countless hours are then spent
reconciling and rationalising this information.
Hexagon Mining’s partnership with Grupo México
addresses this issue and embodies a smarter
way to mine. By integrating design, planning, and
operations technologies, Toquepala can connect
people and processes, make sense of big data,
and rely on one version of the truth.”
sense of the data they’ve collected, and how do
they know that their analyses are correct? How
do they then turn the collected data into
information, and then into action?”
When analysed and applied effectively, the
vast amounts of data collected from hardware,
software, and other equipment systems can
significantly impact a mine’s productivity and
asset health by increasing uptime, maximising
equipment and personnel utilisation, and
reducing overall maintenance costs. In order to
accomplish these gains, mines must utilise an
intelligent maintenance management system
capable of handling massive data collection and
translating that data into actionable information.
Davidson states: “Modular Mining Systems’
MineCare® 3 Maintenance Management solution,
released last year, is the latest evolution of our
asset health solution and does just that. As a
cloud-based solution, it is designed to monitor,
store and manage large amounts of equipment
health data; an integral piece to the big
data/asset management entanglement.
Speaking specifically to maintenance
management in mining environments, cloud
computing enables the combination of powerful
data analytics software and dynamic resource
process scaling. But rather than just accumulate
and regurgitate ‘all data, all the time’, cloud
computing goes a step further to present big
data not as an unintelligible collection of
metrics, but rather as streamlined insights into
Managing Big Data with cloud-based
maintenance
Recent strides in information technology have
resulted in increasingly complex hardware and
software for the mining industry. In addition, the
on-board computer systems on today’s trucks,
shovels and other heavy equipment units now
generate massive amounts of information about
the machines they monitor. Eric Davidson, Vice
President, Business Development, at Modular
Mining Systems, Inc told IM: When factored
across an enterprise-level fleet, the amount of
data is even more staggering. As more mining
organisations turn to big data and predictive
analytics to better understand their mobile
equipment health, they face many new
challenges in managing the vast amounts of
collected data and the infrastructure required to
maintain it. How, for example, does a mine know
if it’s collecting the right data? How do they make
NOVEMBER 2016 | International Mining 37