NETWORKS AND COMMUNICATIONS
targeting process more efficient, ultimately generating higher yields and creating less environmental impact. Geologists will be able to more accurately determine the next target, enabling our teams to locate undiscovered gold deposits that may have previously required multiple drills to find.”
“ This is a strategic initiative for both IBM and Goldcorp,” said Dariusz Piotrowski, Director, IBM Cognitive & Analytics Solutions Development.“ We are taking the IBM’ s analytics platform tested and proven in the oil and gas industry and adapting it to the mining industry, demonstrating that cognitive subsurface analytics can lead to performance enhancement across the entire natural resources sector.”
Last year, Barrick Gold Corporation and Cisco announced they would partner for the digital reinvention of Barrick ' s business, bringing together cutting-edge technology and expertise to unleash the full potential of mining. Over the course of the collaboration, Barrick and Cisco will focus on research and development, and jointly use their networks and expertise to drive Barrick ' s digital reinvention. In the first step of the collaboration, Barrick and Cisco will work together to develop a flagship digital operation at the Cortez mine in Nevada— embedding digital technology in every dimension of the mine to deliver better, faster, and safer mining. For instance, advanced sensing technology and realtime operational data will be used to inform decision-making. Equipment will be automated for increased productivity, while predictive algorithms will enhance the precision and speed of maintenance and metallurgy. The goal at Cortez is to redefine best-in-class mining.
Building on the Cortez mine digitisation experience, Cisco will support Barrick as it transforms its entire business over time— bringing digital technology to all of its mines as well as to its head office. For example, interactive data rooms outfitted with real-time data, analytics, and predictive tools will allow company leaders to work together across the organisation. An enterprise-wide analytics hub will enable performance management, and financial and operational benchmarking. New digital tools will improve scenario planning and portfolio management. These new technologies will permit Barrick ' s leaders to make decisions with greater speed, precision, and productivity; to assess and mitigate risk more effectively; and to provide greater transparency to partners.
“ Digital technology will also improve Barrick ' s environmental and safety performance. Predictive data and analytics will improve management of energy, water, and emissions. Real-time data capture will allow the company to be even more transparent with, and accountable to, its local partners— for instance, by providing water
monitoring information in real time. And the use of digital technology will enhance Barrick ' s permitting activities, further increasing transparency to stakeholders.”
In January 2017, Cisco Account Manager Alex Smith further discussed Barrick ' s partnership with Cisco, as well as the benefits and challenges of digitisation on the Barrick Beyond Borders blog. His role at Cisco is to guide mining companies on how technology can help transform existing processes with the goal of saving money and / or increasing productivity. Interestingly, when asked how mining compares to other industries in terms of digital transformation, he states:“ I hope I’ m not offending anyone by saying this, but mining is at the lower end of the scale. A lot of what I’ ll call peer industries— which can include manufacturing, oil and gas, and even electrical utilities— started down the digitisation path quite a bit earlier than mining. They’ re seeing the benefits of this with lower costs and improved revenues and services to their customers or consumers … looking at Barrick specifically, there are so many potential projects that have been identified that it’ s been a matter of, not so much coming up with ideas, but prioritising them to see which ones to tackle first.”
On Barrick specific projects he states:“ Asset management is one of the projects with a larger potential return on investment, at least in terms of data I’ ve seen from Barrick. I love talking about vehicles because they’ re mobile equipment, and that adds the technical challenge of gathering information from something that’ s constantly moving. Capturing that data about the health of components that are on vehicles and then routing it through some sort of artificial intelligence that can analyse the history of that type of device, or even the device itself, could be used to predict when equipment is going to fail. This artificial intelligence could then trigger a notification and schedule maintenance for that equipment instead of the mine experiencing a breakdown and work stoppage for a given process or work area where that equipment was being used.”
More generally on how the partnership with Cisco will help Barrick, he comments:“ The very first thing that we offered as part of this partnership was a methodology and a thought process to embrace digitisation and to get started down this path. Another aspect of this partnership is that Cisco involves its ecosystem of partners. No one company can bring everything that Barrick needs and there are many, many companies whose experience Barrick can leverage. Some of them have focused on mining in the past and some of them haven’ t, but they’ ve helped with really interesting transformations in other industries. Barrick is, refreshingly, very open to looking at and borrowing things done in other industries. Another thing that Cisco brings is an innovation centre in Toronto and investments in a university chair for mining. We’ d like to encourage that university and the students that may be choosing research projects to focus on things that are important to Barrick and maybe co-invent something very unique. Then, of course, there’ s technology, which includes how to connect people to everything from vehicles to any kind of wired or wireless device. We have collaboration technologies that Barrick has already started to implement and that are absolutely critical, since they improve decision-making processes within digitised companies. These technologies share information such as video, which allows you to bring expert eyes to an issue at an underground mine without actually having to send someone underground. We’ re also exploring the use of analytics. Cisco strengthens Barrick’ s capacity for analytics, networking and integrating disparate data sources that reside in the company. The final technology we bring that spans everything is cyber security. The more and more connected a company becomes, the more important cyber security becomes to keep proprietary information safe.”
On partnerships, Smith argues that digitisation really makes them even more important as companies become more data-enabled.“ That data comes from existing Barrick suppliers, some of whom you would describe as partners such as OSIsoft, Caterpillar and Sandvik. There are the large Original Equipment Manufacturer partnerships, and I think there are going to be new partnerships to access technologies such as analytics for predictive maintenance. That’ s going to come from expertise out there in the mining industry and other industries.”
He concludes:“ I think the ideal situation for mining, once it’ s digitised, leads into the concept of continuous mining, where you’ re mechanically cutting into ore, digitally figuring out whether the ore contains a high enough grade for processing, and backfilling the tunnels that you’ ve just very precisely and knowledgeably carved. That’ s a continuous process that can happen without moving people in and out of mines for blasting after drilling, and so on.”
Equipment OEM partnerships
The key OEMs supplying equipment and technology solutions to mines also have increasing network and data handling needs as they deal with their mining customers.
In March this year, Sandvik Mining and Rock Technology announced an agreement with IBM to jointly develop market leading offerings in Data Driven Productivity and Predictive Maintenance services for the mining and rock excavation
36 International Mining | SEPTEMBER 2017