
Internet of Things
A promising concept for Mining Industry
Mining is an important industry for many countries and regions around the globe. And while it is vital to many countries and to the global economy, it is at a crossroads today. It is currently faced with multiple adverse global trends such as falling commodity prices, a slowing global economy and skilled labour shortages. The industry must also navigate remote and sometimes hazardous global operations with far-flung supply chains. Mining industry today needs to meet the multiple objectives of production enhancement, improvement in efficiency, cost containment, while also addressing sustainability issues and aiming for global competitiveness to tide through one of the strongest commodity downturns.
There are some key trends shaping the mining industry both from a business function as well as technology perspective. There is a clear need to be cost efficient and enhance operational efficiently on an ongoing basis to be competitive and sustainable. The industry needs to ensure safety of its workers while minimizing environmental impact, being fully compliant to society and law and also improve on talent management and retention ability. On the technology side there are newer and latest technologies coming up driving innovations on business processes. The mining industry while being a slow absorber of new technologies is looking the direction of being fully digital and connected globally and technologies like Internet of things, real time business management with advanced analytical capabilities like predictions, cloud based solutions and mobile capabilities are driving these innovations.
One of the biggest emerging and promising trends is Internet of things (IoT) which is essentially about connection of machines, objects and devices at a sensor level and combination of data from different sources to build newer insights and improve processes.
Internet of Things (IoT) can definitely help the mining industry unlock business benefits beyond automation and pave the way for new innovative information technology applications which helps companies pursue visibility, safety, and efficiency like never before. Mining is a very old industry and often not the first mover when it comes to adopting new technology. However, slowly but steadily, IoT is making its way into mining companies. Typical characteristics of the Mining industry like large a physical environment, massive size and amount of equipment, remote and often hostile working conditions with safety hazards, make the industry an ideal candidate for IoT led transformation. Companies like SAP are already supporting the adoption of this concept into the industry with IT/OT integration and usage of promising concepts like IoT to drive fully digital and connected mines with highly advanced Mining business process innovations.
The “Internet of things” (IoT) is becoming an increasingly growing topic of conversation both in the workplace and outside of it. But what exactly is the “Internet of things”? A simple definition of the Internet of Things is the connection of objects such as computing machines, embedded devices, equipment, appliances, and sensors to the Internet. This could include everything from cell phones, washing machines, automobiles, wearable devices and almost anything else one can think of. This also applies to components of machines, for example a jet engine of an airplane or the drill of an oil rig or equipment’s and machines working at remote Mine sites.
Over the past decade we have seen significant changes in how people and business connect. We have seen the hyper growth of social networks in the past decade. Enterprises have taken note of these technologies, ones that can connect 100’s of millions of people together. Not to be outdone business networks have also prospered, with millions of companies connecting their supplier, customer and payment systems to seamlessly engage in commerce. Both of these phenomena are clear signs that hyper connectivity is here to stay. At the same time It is estimated that by 2020, there would be 75 billion connections between devices like smartphones, appliances, lighting, manufacturing equipment, agriculture, wearable computers. IoT will now connect the current people and business networks to EVERYTHING ELSE. When we couple these changes with improvements in network infrastructure, big data analytics and smart applications we have the entered the era of truly connected world. Now we could ask, what can individuals, society and companies (say in Mining) achieve when EVERYTHING IS CONNECTED? When we have a bidirectional network that connects people, machines, business, process, data and everything together the possibilities are truly endless.
In the context of mining industry, the Internet of Things platform can connect all mining equipment’s, people, processes and systems. This could help improve visibility of operations across the mining operations, make it easier to trace goods, vehicles and manpower movement inside the mines. In addition, IoT enables computers to observe, identify and understand different facets of mining operations without the involvement of any human intervention, which reduces the number of workers who actually need to be working in the remote and often hostile mining environment. So IoT becomes a very promising concept enabling a central remotely operated digital mining scenario. IoT could also help automate and improve the maintenance and operation of mining machines in a connected manner thereby improving the overall operations efficiency. Companies such as SAP are currently supporting the IoT journey for Mining Industry in a big way to deliver IoT-based solutions specifically addressing the needs of the industry.
Let’s look at what’s actually happening today. As you can see, industries worldwide are already investing in the Internet of Things. Over $16 billion was spent across these five verticals alone in 2013, and industry analysts expect that number to increase to $36 billion in 2017. Some of the startling findings of various industry study reports, point towards the huge potential of the IoT market.
With the marriage of smart devices, advanced connectivity, and management platforms to manage the collaboration, IoT and machine-to-machine (M2M) communication is already gaining traction in many areas of mining as a means to optimize efficiency and develop new business practices. Use of this technology is accelerating with mobile and cloud innovation, as well as advances in Big Data and predictive analytics based on in-memory computing. It’s also becoming more affordable and practical as the size and price of sensors shrink. Mining companies that embrace innovative technologies can gain first mover advantage in this direction and become far more cost competitive and sustainable in this cyclical industry. We can categorize some of the opportunities and areas in mining which could be enabled by IoT as follows:
Asset Maintenance
You must be a registered user to add a comment. If you've already registered, sign in. Otherwise, register and sign in.
User | Count |
---|---|
8 | |
7 | |
4 | |
4 | |
4 | |
4 | |
4 | |
3 | |
3 | |
3 |