Welcome to the beyond digital transformation podcast!
In this podcast, episode of the beyond digital transformation, connectivity, and communication stream sponsored by AVEVA sudbury INO a Glencore company and MICA, we dive deep into the topic of accessing operations data in remote first mining environments. This panel was designed and hosted by Greg Sanblom, Superintendent of innovation and technology at Glencore with panelist, Millan Herce from Raglan, mine. Bringing the remote mine site perspective and two subject matter experts with global mining experience, Roland Plett from Cisco sharing, his deep knowledge of connectivity. And how other operations are tackling this challenge and Martin Provencher sharing his experience of unique use cases involving mining company and vendor collaboration of how and why mine sites would leverage their operations data to enhance and improve the reliability of assets for their operations.
Greg Sandblom:everyone welcome to the next session in our connectivity and communication stream. this is our second session in a group of four, panel discussions that we have. and we're gonna run through a few introductions, but first I wanted to go through, some basics about what beyond digital transformation 2022 is all about. BDT is a platform for results driven, mining professionals who want to deploy systems that deliver measurable impacts for their mining operations and each stream brings together three unique perspectives. from mine operations, mine, industry partners and mine industry suppliers, and those perspectives, here are brought together by, the co-chairs of the connectivity and communication stream. the first is, Charles Nyabeze, MICA we have Martin Provencher from Aveva who's, one of our guest panelists and myself, Greg Sandblom, who is with, Sudbury's Glencore, operations. so again, welcome to this session. in our first session, for the communications and connectivity stream, we explored the general challenges and opportunities in connectivity, in remote mining operations, from two perspectives actually, working remotely, from the site and also working remotely within the site. so for example, being underground, And working away from your desk, how do we deliver information to those people who are remote actually on the site? and today we're privileged to have three distinguished panelists, with unique views in this area and we're going to talk in more detail about accessing operations data when working remotely. so on the call, we have Roland Plett, from Cisco, he's the global lead for energy and mining from Cisco and Millan Herce who is a senior mine engineer at, at Raglan operations for Glencore and Martin Provencher, who is, or the industry principal for Aveva. again, thanks, to the three of you for joining, and looking forward to having a great discussion, but, I'm going to hand it over to the three of you to introduce yourselves in more detail. Roland, go ahead.
AVEVA Video:First.
Roland Plett:my name's Roland Plett, I'm with Cisco systems and, uh, I've been in the communications industry for about 25 years or so, and, mostly in, in the Canadian market, I live in Calgary, Alberta in the foothills, close to, the Rockies where it apparently is still snowing today and, it's, of course that's not a new thing for any of the Canadian mining, people, first of all, I've been working in the global role as Greg indicated for a few years now. really working with mining companies around the world. a lot of activity in, in Australia and in Canada. two big hubs for mining, and also in the U S And so I'm looking forward to having this discussion, of course, communications is a huge part of, mine operations these days. And so I'm looking forward to having that conversation.
Greg Sandblom:Thanks Roland and move on millan
Millan Herce:yeah. Hello everyone. My name is Millan Herce. I'm a mining engineer. I'm working for Raglan now for nine years, this summer. and I work also before Raglan for a mining equipment supplier, and also for a consultant building a new mine. So what I work on each side of the fences and with my role at Raglan I've been doing a lot of project in innovation, which, mainly on equipment where we introduce new type of equipment, at Raglan and new technology tell our remote, for example, other type of truck and also infrastructures. But since the end of 2018, I'm one of the lead to install a project lead, to install telemetry, proximity detection, and geo location, at Raglan, we're deploying once it's, everything is deployed now we're using the data. So that gives you a quick overview of my background.
Greg Sandblom:Thanks Millan and, next is Martin and Martin is going to introduce himself and then share a video that we attempted to show in the first session, but it didn't work. the technology let us down. So I think we've got it, got to work in this time. we'll share that video afterwards and have a brief Q and A after the video show.
Martin Provencher:That's good. Thanks Greg. So my name is Martin Provencher from Quebec, Canada, and the global industry principal for mining companies. I work actually with the, with mining companies from all around the world. I'm also vice chair of the maintenance, engineering and reliability society of the Canadian Institute of mining studied the technology and artificial intelligence 30 years ago. I started the, in IT, IT manager, things like that, and then moved to production directors or in charge of operations and maintenance, for a couple of years. And then after that, from a personal, interest, I wanted to go back to technology and to work with mining companies to. I love helping mining companies. leverage data and technology to improve their performance. So that's basically my role within Aveva now.
Greg Sandblom:Thanks Martin. And, we'll move to the video now. so I was going to ask a quick question on that because the video did come with a big portion of it was data unification and, and value that comes from data unification and, Martin, maybe you just comment on where you see early value on bringing that data together, off equipment and so on.
Martin Provencher:Yes, for sure. there's a couple of main areas where companies are leveraging that data. coming from their assets mainly, two of the main areas, of course, health and safety, environmental compliance here are critical these days. So a lot of companies are leveraging operational data to, to make sure that they can, for example, implement compliancy rules in their operational data platform. That's one of the big things, the other, two main aspects I see where most companies are. Starting with is from an energy management perspective. So leveraging that data to help improve energy efficiency. This is one big thing that we see. And also the other one is from a reliability or maintenance perspective. A lot of companies are leveraging operational data to help them save a lot of money. Syncrude, for example, in Canada, they've presented, they saved more than$20 million on their whole trucks, leveraging operational data. and the same for fixed assets, Rio Tinto in, in the, at Kennecott. they saved more than$12 million on the first six months they've implemented predictive analytics. so this is, these are just a couple of examples where we see that once you start leveraging the operational data, and then you start using advanced analytics, there are hundreds of thousands or millions of dollars that, that you can save in terms of money very easily. If I may say it like that,
Greg Sandblom:Okay. Good. That's great. Thanks for the perspective. we're gonna, we're gonna jump into, into our discussion soon. there's a few things I wanted to, to, communicate to people. one of these, they are upcoming events. the so 20, 22 upcoming, panel events in June of 2022, we're going to carry forward what we're discussing today. and we're going to get into some case studies around telemetry, AI, cloud services for managing data and so on. And so that'll be in June of 2022 and in August of 22, we're actually going to get into the use cases. So what are the primary use cases? I think Martin touched on a few of them right there, but, use cases as far as dashboards go, as far as, using business intelligence to deliver data to the right people. that'll be coming in August of 2022. So we're basically moving forward in this as a journey within our, in our string panelists. And, today is getting into the technology of how do we actually get the data and what do we do with the data once we got it. and then it will progress into the applications and how the data is used. next I wanted to talk a little bit about what, about our BDT community. so first of all, it does bring the mining companies perspectives to the table, and it drives industry collaboration. So it's miners helping miners, but the most important part of, of BDT is that, since its inception, it's donated more than$100,000 to charities, And, for 2022, the sub reaction for youth is our charity of choice. really appreciate all the work that's been done by the, by, Neha's team and, the work that, her partners have put in place to, deliver and thanks to all the sponsors who have donated and, and helped out charities, local charities in the communities that we work in. this year I'd like to thank the sponsors for this stream, Redpath mining, we're contractors and engineers, and they provide full service mining solutions, around the world since 1962. And, the other partner sponsor is a PACE.Global, digital adoption specialists. And that may help you achieve measurable results with your technology that you put in place. but that said, I'm going to jump right in. And, again, this session is more getting back to the basics. how do we actually get the data? I think that, we talked about all these great things that we can do with the data once we have it, but there's specific challenges that I think everybody on this call can relate to. And probably the attendance that we call can relate to just getting the data, from operations into the hands of the right people is very challenging. so the first question I'm going to pose to the panelists, is what is the most challenging aspect from a technology standpoint, as it relates to accessing data when working remotely.
AVEVA Video:Please jump in.
Millan Herce:if I say for Raglan which, we're a remote site, accessing data as there's not an easy, just because we're not connected to the grid or to the internet that we're linked to internet as a satellite. So in that case, everything needs to be on server that are on premise. So locally, where we need, enough space, enough, server enough IT resources to, to maintain it or to fix it when there's a problem where when you're in what we call in the south, you're you can. Have your data in a Amazon cloud that, if there's a problem with the server, they have multiple, server as a backup. So let's say that's a challenge for us, where we, it took some time, in 2020 to receive the proper server, install it, put writhe up and see. So that was our biggest challenge is to build our network, to receive tons of information and data.
Martin Provencher:Yeah. And maybe I can jump in here. from what I see with customers that I work with, I'm. Network connectivity, especially for underground mines is very often, quite a challenge. but what's important to notice today is that the, there are lots of technology that are available today. For example, wifi technology has been used in a couple of places. satellite network, of course, for open pit mine. Baffin land higher and mines here in Canada. They've used satellite communication. of course 5g, 4g 5g networks are being used quite heavily. For example, bulletin. I take mine, in Sweden, they've used, they've implemented a 5g network, here in Canada, Kirkland, Lake Gold also implemented a 5g network. and also there's mesh networking technology that I see couple of mining companies, Agnico Eagle, for example, BHB, some of them are using mesh networking technology. So there's a lot of technology available, of course. you have to identify which one is the most suitable for your operations, but definitely the technology today is available. It's just a matter of selecting which one, does fit the best for people's needs. So Martin, is
Greg Sandblom:that, are you referring to the technology within the mine site or connecting to the wide area network?
Martin Provencher:the main challenge, when I speak with companies, the main challenge that they have is to get access from the mine site, to get access to the data from the mine site. Most of the companies I talk with, they already have a network. for when they're there, they have an office or a network connectivity is there because it's probably much easier to implement the network connectivity at the office, but getting the data out of the mine site, this is where companies are struggling. So that's why I'm saying that the technology is there to get access to that data, even underground for underground mines. It's just a matter of selecting, which one does fit, the most, or which fits the best for this specific mine site..
Millan Herce:And if I can hear a Martin, you're right. there was some mind are developing intensive, meters per meter per year. For example, Raglan were doing 12 kilometer of drift per year. So it is a challenge to first retrofit the existing tunnels, and then keep up with the new development. So choosing the right technology to that is easy to train and maintain is a challenge. And you don't want to type of, wireless communication. You want to choose one, just to simplify again, training diagrams, plans. it's been a challenge, but what I can recommend is visit some mine that has different options. And choose the one that you prefer fits better for you.
Greg Sandblom:So I'm hearing you, and there is a lot of technology out there that can be used to, wireless and connect people within the mine site. and your expectations have become very high to, to deliver that communication to everybody within the mine. but not everybody is there. so how do we succeed in delivering data when we don't have that reliable and wide skirt and under widespread underground, wireless network?
Roland Plett:Yeah, I would say it's a bit of an evolution. I hear it. I hear what Milan saying about you don't want to diversify your wireless environment too much because it becomes a bit of a maintenance, challenge. but in, in reality, what I am seeing customers doing from our perspective is suiting their wireless deployments to the specific use cases. Of course, they have kind of a. Wireless technology that they really try and hit most use cases with. and the early days that was wifi, just because everybody understood how wifi worked and it's relatively simple from an operations perspective. and then as the use cases became more mobile sensitive, with remote and autonomous type of operation. and also, as Millan was saying that the environment changes so fast, that the amount of coverage that you need becomes very large. And that gets to be quite challenging with wifi, just because of how many access points you need to put out there. And so that's where a lot of the exploration of the, LTE, pro and private LTE environments in and above, even in above-ground, we're seeing private LTE environments start to come up, Licensing is definitely a chance. And, and that's something that, that has really slowed some of that deployment above ground. but it's definitely answered a lot of those coverage questions and it becomes a technology that can reach into new areas maybe a little bit quicker than wifi could. but it doesn't necessarily answer all the questions. we've had cases where customers have had a lot of trouble getting enough video bandwidth back from the phase, it in their color, remote operations with LTE, And th there's, some people are waiting for 5g to answer some of that. and there is some really interesting technology coming on that, but it's not quite there yet. In terms of the millimeter or the really high bandwidth type of back haul. So we're seeing still seeing a lot of requirement for hotspots of wifi. Even if LTE becomes the backbone and then there's another, another interesting, data gathering environment that we're starting to see emerge. one really interesting use case, that I've been working with a partner on is power, cable management, where they're able to, put a little watermelon around a power cable, and it's able to communicate back, at really low bit rates. And if they were to do that with wifi or LTE, the battery would last maybe a month, right in there with some of the new 900 megahertz technologies. They're able to have these batteries last for many years. And so maintenance of those becomes more important. So it's not quite as simple as just picking one wireless technology and putting it everywhere. and you can make some strategic choices there and say, Use this technology say LTE for 80% of what we need and we're just not going to do the other stuff. but there, there is a compelling reason to actually have multiple wireless technologies onsite in a lot of cases.
Greg Sandblom:That's very interesting. thanks for the perspective. Rolling. I think that leads us to, multiple, wireless methodologies, but there's also, various different communication systems for data, voice, other communication systems. how do you manage those as we bring them together, as we try to transition from one to the other, is there a best practices way of managing those systems?
Millan Herce:I can jump on what we did at our mind. I don't know about the rest I want. What I can share is what we've done. And Roland you just brought some very good thing where yes, we use transitional, wireless system until we put on LTE network. And I'll say it's the same for a communication, for voice and data. I remember at the beginning, we're still struggling to, we want to use a different, wireless system for voice and another one for data. And at the end, we decided to keep it to one and the LTE or the cellular network allow us to do it. Again, being an old mine, we've been in running for now 25 years. We have old spaces and all, let's say a legacy communication system, which is a VHF analog. to be able to do the transition, we keep both signal. We keep both antenna in the drift. We call it a leaky feeder, but, or a cable acting as an antenna and we create a bridges. So the bridge allow us from a cell phone to talk to someone on the VHF. And when I say talking, I'm using the CB, the push to talk, and we'll keep it probably for the rest of 2022 until everyone is well-trained. We're we started last year receiving data and using teleremote with LTE. So w we had success, using one type of wireless system to the community to do data and voice communication. it was not, we had our journey, we still do, but, we're proving that it's feasible and is the key. The bridge really is a key for giving us time to give training and learning. We have problem even with the HeartWare on what's what holds the folder, what we call it, the car kit, the phone holder where in the Arctic it's on a permafrost condition. So we have to heat the phone, or without that, the battery will last. w we'll go away for, in a couple of hours, we won't do the shift. yeah, w we need this transition and the bridge.
Greg Sandblom:Yeah. I think, Millan you touched on a few things and I, I love the fact that we're talking about network options and communication options. And I think that there's so much detail into it. And some of the, like you mentioned, the holder and so on there's, charging methodology of mobile devices is there's just so many things you need to think of beyond, so ensure you're, you'll end up getting surprises. You may not get the same surprises in their lens, experience at Raglan, but there'll be things that you need to do to, there'll be catch you by surprise, as far as implementing, Next I'm going to step away from the pure technology aspect of it. And, there's,
Roland Plett:maybe I'll just add to that quickly, in addition to, to, to some of these, glitches, if you want to call them that there's also the building trust with the reliability part. And, and it, as much as we say, there's a ubiquitous coverage of data in the mine. It's just not quite there yet. And there is some trust that's been built with the old push to talk radio system that's just hard to replace. And so I think Millan, you're doing a very, really smart thing by just having that overlap for a period of time. and that period of time can be different for every customer, depending on how quick it, you build trust with the actual data environment so I just wanted to add that.
Greg Sandblom:Yeah. Thanks. Thanks. Roland.
Millan Herce:Correct. Yeah. don't forget. And you're totally right, Roland. building the trust that they, we w we cut the signal. If it doesn't work, the truck won't move, or so it's a big risk and more than just the reliability of the system, when stall is the trust, you're a hundred percent right on that
Greg Sandblom:great stuff. yeah, as I said, I'm going to pull away from the pure tech part of things right now, and getting access to the data necessarily, but then a little bit about what we do with the data. And there's been a recent, push to centralized operation centers, particularly in remote operations, which we're talking about in this session. I'm wondering if, anyone could talk about, examples that they have, in mining companies who are delivering a remote operation.
Martin Provencher:Yeah, maybe I can start. I have a, quite a few examples of companies that have already shared their stories about the remote operations or integrated remote operations centers that they have implemented. For example, here in Canada or Silver Metal, I mean they have, 1400 kilometers between the mine and the, headquarters, and they have remote app, complete remote operations installed in go near Montreal. This is pretty impressive. It's a great center. so they manage everything. I visited their, the, this site and it's pretty amazing. they manage everything. They see, they use analytics, they identify large rocks and things like that. Very a great example. doleful gusta minerals also, they've implemented it so that they have their engineers in their headquarters that can support operations people, at the mine sites. So another great example, Barrick gold also implemented it. there's a lot of great examples of one that I really appreciate the sharing with customers is with the black rock mine in Africa. they have a 10 meter video wall display that shows everything. So from the headquarters, from a management perspective, you can see everything that's happening, at the mine site, from a financial perspective, from an operations perspective. So they really are combining all the data from all those disparate systems altogether to present. one version of the whole activities that the organization is leveraging. So the, so for now, I see a lot of companies are leveraging technology to have remote visibility. For example, another great example from a sustainability perspective is BHP. they've implemented it across all their sites in Australia. I think at the time they presented, there were 35 sites that were being monitored, but they now have complete visibility of their 35 sites. with a kind of a Google map approach with the Esri platform. So they see in real time all their sites and whenever they want, there's a potential environmental deviation coming in, they will deep dive into that specific site from a graphical perspective, using a kind of a Google map approach, and they can deep dive and see real-time activities, real-time operations. And of course take actions, before. Major deviation happens. So this is a very good example that BHP has shared lately. So yes, a lot of companies are actually leveraging technology to implement remote operations. It is possible today. Yes.
Roland Plett:Martin, you mentioned, you talked about monitoring. Are you also seeing these operations start to, start to drive more autonomous operation in some parts of the operation? so that is, is that a progression that you start with monitoring and then you move more towards autonomy?
Martin Provencher:Yeah, definitely. Actually Gartner describes it as a continuous, intelligence journey. So it's really, the first analytics is visual analytics, so it's descriptive analytics, so it's people analyzing data. So that's the first step in any analytics journey. You have to see what's happening before thinking about using artificial intelligence and all of these things. And then of course the next step is. Now that you see what's happening, you can investigate, identify conditions that lead to environmental deviation that leads to mechanical failures or whatever. And then you implement those conditions for real-time condition monitoring analysis. So this is a second step, and then you move on with predictive analitics where you build predictions. And then that's where you start thinking about prescriptions. So this is where we see some companies I've started thinking about leveraging AI for autonomous operation, not just for autonomous trucks. Of course, autonomous trucks are there. Some companies are using it the more and more actually. but now we're thinking we're talking about autonomous operations from an operations perspective. And yes, there are mining companies that I work with that have started leveraging AI to implement autonomous operations. I can share the ones that have presented in the past. And the one that I'm thinking of is with CMX. and this is in the seventh industry, but again, the same applies for mining. and I can share that story because they have presented, but CMX, they managed kilns. So large rotary ovens that are operated at 1500 G a hundred degrees Celsius. So it's very, complex to operate. And now they are gathering all that data remotely, of course, and using artificial intelligence to be able to send back to the control systems, the optimal set points for operations. So this is a very good example of autonomous operation that was presented in 2018. It was a pilot project, but of course today they're moving much further. But, so the idea here. Again, it's to start small, start with visual analytics, descriptive analytics where people can see that's the first step. And it's also helps empowering your people, empowering employees, operators they need that they can do. they will do a good job if they know what's happening. If they don't know what's happening, chances are, they will do whatever they think that is good, but if they see what's happening and this is a great, the Syncrude example I gave earlier, great example, operators, now they can see what they're doing live in real time and it helped them reduce the incidents. from a dumping perspective. So very good example here.
Greg Sandblom:That's great. And I wanted to pull on this a little further from a site survivability approach. as we start to investigate what we can pull away from traditional, onsite control centers and move it into a centralized process. W what factors, what kind of, functionality are you seeing being pulled away the traditional functionality and to ensure that, your mind can survive. What kind of redundancy are you seeing people put into networks and so on, so that, that, that functionality can be pulled out from site, and without risk to operations?
Roland Plett:maybe I'll talk a little bit about, we've our whole management strategy at Cisco has really evolved over the last, five or six years. And we're still on that journey, right? we've seen so many benefits on centralization from a management perspective where, where you're able to administer policy are able to administer, security measures. You're able to really get a global view of your operation by centralizing some of the administration. But you bring up a really good point is that, especially for mining, where you have some of these connectivity challenges that Millan talked about earlier, you do need the survivability. And so what we've done in the networking space is we've division. We put a division between some of the funds, right? so there, or the administrative layer, we pulled into the cloud, but the actual data, what we call data plane or forwarding data, all the data. Transmission stays local. And then in, in the cases where you have a sort of extreme isolation, you do need some of the control plane to be local as well, to make sure that if there is a disconnection that you're not cutting off functions that can prevent you from operating. So I'm speaking about that from a network perspective, but I'm sure the same principles apply in, in general operation. in fact, what we've seen in the LTE world is, is one of the challenges, in deploying LTE for some of our customers, is that, the traditional way of deploying LTE is in an island, right? and it doesn't really interact super, super thoroughly with the rest of the enterprise. And so some of the challenges have become, how do you manage identity. The SIM based management that LTE typically comes with, how do you integrate that into the rest of the enterprise from a policy perspective and all of that happens really well centrally. and so it's, there's a lot of advantage in pulling that into the cloud from an administration perspective, but you don't want to S you don't want to sacrifice that locally. And so there's caching algorithms and all kinds of things that need to be put into the system to ensure that survivability is there. So great questions to ask and especially, especially if you have prolonged outages on a, on an end and in the course of a year, you want to definitely be looking at him. What does operation look like when I'm disconnected?
Greg Sandblom:That's it? That's excellent. Thanks. Roland. so I'm going to move on. You've touched on cloud and, obviously the cloud, offers a tremendous opportunity to take advantage of compute power to. to be able to store data more easily to access data remotely more easily. but there is challenges there even around site survivability and so on in a hybrid environment, using cloud and on-premise solutions. what do you, I'd like to open it up to the group to talk a little bit about the challenges of that and what the opportunities are taking advantage of a hybrid, cloud platform?
Millan Herce:one thing I could throw in is when you're using cloud or hybrid is cyber security, Greg, is that something you want to touch now or later, because, as soon as you open your data, your information that's going to kick in.
Greg Sandblom:Yeah, absolutely. It's one of the biggest challenges of cloud computing and worrying about what data should be out there compared to a on-prem. yes,
Millan Herce:I can say that for us, which is part of Glencore and Nicole Dean cybersecurity is pretty rigid and we're hiding behind the, network or bandwidth, restraint, to say we cannot open the clouds. So that's how we're excused. And we follow sub savvier security guidelines, just because of that, keeping everything in premise. and we had to select it, a couple of supplier that are able to access our server to help us to, to troubleshoot, but we have very small list of supplier that can do this. I'm not an expert in that, but I can say that. It's one of the reason we don't use a hybrid Elza and the communication, which will be resolved at the end of 2023 with a cable fiber cable that will arrive at Bryan island. it's. This sub is cyber security. So we just close it, keep it everything on premise. We're scared and just waiting and see what the market is doing. but, I guess Carla and Matt, you guys might have more experience than I do more knowledge, so
Greg Sandblom:I'll let you maybe, or to enrolling. Speak about, for sites that are not bandwidth, the constraint that, and, I think Melinda will probably learn a little bit cause he won't be soon and we'll have to, people become calling books, certain services that they want to use. And you're not gonna be able to say no at that point. So maybe the two of you can discuss
Roland Plett:that th this security conversation is an interesting one. just because as Millan said that he's not unique in this, I think every mine has the easiest answer is, let's put an air gap in play, and if the stuff can't get out or in then, security is going to be fine. And, and as you get more connected, that's more of a challenge. I don't know. I don't know that you can actually realistically operate an air gap today. I don't know if that's possible, quite frankly. just because you have so many security zones present in almost every physical location, And so for someone to, to move data physically from one location to another can jeopardize a lot of the security practices you've put in play from a connectivity perspective. And so there's, you really have to think through in a much more, systematic and methodical way, how do you protect that data? Not just integrity, but just the, that there doesn't get into the wrong hands. And so there is, yeah, there is a whole practice around that. that's pretty, pretty rigorous. and even the hybrid examples I gave earlier are not trivial when it comes to, adhering to some of these frameworks for security. and I lived over that, When I talked about, control goes to the cloud and data stays local and all of that, but they're interacting in the same, in the same equipment. And so how do you have a cloud security zone in the same equipment, they have a local security zone. there has to be some due diligence from a security perspective to ensure you're not compromising anything. So it's not a simple answer, Greg it's something you definitely want to fix serious and invest some money. And when you're going to connect to outside entities. Yeah,
Martin Provencher:sure. And if I may add, the security aspect is one critical aspect, but also the reliability, if I may say it like that aspect, I was just having a conversation yesterday with a mining company. I mean they have sites in Africa and they are struggling because they have to think about an on-prem solution for almost everything related to their operations, because they are struggling with fiber optics being eaten by. By, by animals, this is real life situation that they're facing. So they are, they had the cloud strategy, they had to review their cloud strategy because they were struggling with that. so this is a real life scenario that, we've had a good conversation about how I think hybrid is a must. you have to think about hybrid solutions. You cannot do. for example, we have, customers north Skydrol in Brazil, for example, they've leveraged the cloud quite extensively and it's amazing what they're doing. they have three mine sites, north of Brazil and, Brazil is huge. and they have their headquarters on the south. And of course it's hard to get everybody on site, so their engineers their experts, most of the time they are at the headquarters and now they're leveraging the digital twin. They're leveraging the cloud to bring that data all together. Of course. So this is an example where, you know, and then the engineers can analyze the data, provide feedback to the operations people, in real time. So for example, whoops, we have a truck that, that might, have an issue. So maybe you can reduce your speed so that we can increase the life time of the truck for your shift so that you can complete your shift and then we'll bring it to maintenance. We'll prepare to maintenance activities. So all of these things can be done remotely while there's an interaction between the operations people and the engineering or maintenance team in this case. So I think the ha, but from an operational perspective at the mine site, of course, they're not relying on the cloud if I may say it like that. So they are operating, they have the whole visibility, they have the information they need to. But of course in this case, it's an optimization perspective, so I think hybrid is the word that we need to take into consideration here.
Greg Sandblom:So let's assume at some point a company, resolves the cybersecurity issues that are feeling comfortable with a redundancy and getting the data from their operations to the cloud. there's so much operational data that we can put out in the cloud, in your experience where should companies focus if they're just getting started, with operations type data in a cloud environment, what are some of the areas that they can start with? What are the key value drivers and work? And they looked at achieve value, in the short term.
Millan Herce:if are you talking about a solution which that at, to start what's the, I think categories
Martin Provencher:of data
Greg Sandblom:would be like, is it, equipment data? Is it, data from a mine production point of view? things like that, where. We because so much of it there, where have you companies start to actually achieve value early with, cloud environments,
Millan Herce:as an extraction, on the extraction side and not the processing side, we're titling two places. One is the, hauling, so load and that not only load, but camera to see the box, how full they are. So that's for really operation. And the other side is the maintenance and the low hanging fruit. it's not even the telemetry alarms it's engine hours. So just bring the engine hours and location of the vehicle for the mechanic into your ERP is that when you have your schedule maintenance, you can see, okay, where is the vehicle? How many engine hours, do I go ahead with this, with this, schedule maintenance. So do I change it with another one that it's more urgent? So if that's your question, that's where I say we're toggling on both sides. One is operation and the other one is maintenance and very simple things. whatever with just load and engine hours, you can do end location, real time location. How many hours does a miner can spend looking for an equipment?
Roland Plett:Milan? Is that all local? That's all processed locally though. Is that correct? That is
Millan Herce:correct. Yep. We have set a lot if you're like a Google earth and we can point a, an area when it's on surface and when it's on an, on the ground we're using, either a table or a 3d map we're using.
Roland Plett:I was just going to add that, that if that's a really helpful, commentary on kind of which data sources to go after and operational pieces. one thing that I'd add is to say that the first ones to push the data to the cloud though, plays off of the reliability piece and the security piece as well. So analytics, and then the actual modeling piece, and I'm gonna, get into Martin. I can, but, but the analytics piece where you're modeling the models, that part is really, really helpful to do in the cloud, just because you have so much compute and there's not an operational dependency. and you can do all of that in the cloud. you also don't have the same security concerns. with, data that's disconnected from day-to-day operation. so historical data. So I don't know if that answered answers part of what you're wondering about Greg, but I think that's where I'm seeing the cloud adoption being first. I think it's more operational. Like what Millan was talking about does still stay local very much. So for both reliability and security reasons,
Martin Provencher:and there's a, there's another. Area where I see the cloud is, where I see a lot of value in leveraging their cloud or cloud technologies is, when you start working with OEM vendors, for example, I work a lot with those vendors. where minerals that fell Schmidt, the caterpillar, SKF, bearings, all of them. And of course, for example, from a chemical perspective, mining companies are using chemicals. So chemical companies, they know how their chemicals can react or can be most efficient, but they don't have access to the information at the mine site. From a data sharing perspective, the cloud technology can become very interesting because of course, as a mining, as a miner, you might accept sharing data to that chemical company, because they can help you improve your performance, same applies for your trucks. You might accept sharing data from your trucks to that truck manufacturer so that he can, the manufacturer can help you improve performance on your assets. Same as fixed equipments or bearings. I was in Sweden, last November working with SKF bearings. And that's exactly what they're looking for is how can we help our customers, which are, we're working with the same customers, mining companies and how can we help them improve, their reliability of the, of all their assets when they're using our bearings. So this is a very good example where the cloud can be leveraged quite extensively, where you can share you as a minor can accept sharing some part of your data. To the manufacturer where the manufacturer can analyze that data and then provide feedback to the operations people.
Greg Sandblom:Great stuff. I know, I see that Neha has just, asked people online if they have any questions to post them on the comments so that we're able to, to have an interactive session with, with people on the line. so I think, one of the things I'd like to discuss a little bit as we move into cloud technology and then moving into actual delivering information back to the users, whether they're offsite or onsite, in a mobile aspect. access to data is, is a, that's a growing expectation too. And, for all roles in the mine. So how do you see the importance of delivering information to mobile workers? Whether it's a mobile phones within the operations or outside the firewall, in a remote mining.
Martin Provencher:I can jump in
Roland Plett:and yeah, I'll start maybe, and then give me a reality check and his world, the, there's so many applications, in for so many different systems that are available in mobile devices now, but from mobile HMI's through, through talk systems, we talked about earlier, right on, on devices. And, and so I think there is, especially for roles that have a fairly complex nature to them, whether you're traveling around, whether you're moving from one part of the mind to another, those complex roles probably have the most value associated with devices. And that's where I see those being adopted. just because they're jumping from one type of task to another and a lot of cases, and there's a lot of information that can flow to a device like that. from one task to the next, that can be super valuable without having to always check back and get, get more paper or get more clarification through voice. So huge value there. The other side of the spectrum that I see is when you've got big mitts on it's really hard to work with a mobile device. so you have to work with that trade-off on the one hand, mobile devices are super familiar to everyone in their personal life, right? And so it's not like it's brand new technology to people 10, but just fitting it into the actual working flow and working environment. That's I think where we have to figure some things out yet.
Millan Herce:Yeah. Martin, do you want to go ahead and talk after? Go
Martin Provencher:ahead. You started I'll talk after. No worries.
Millan Herce:Yeah. in the learning curves or change management, w we talked earlier about thing, I think that it was you or I forgot, we're talking about step four for
Roland Plett:the
Millan Herce:network, so in those steps, what we try and I was talking to Vale as to someone at Vale last week is that, w we use a control room as an air traffic controls. So you report, you bring the information to that core. The major I've seen that also ups a lot of data. So from there you use the voice, even if everyone has a smart phone, not everyone knows how to play with apps. And especially when you get into rug, rice, cell phone and special app, Finding the button to open. It is different from what you're used to with a Samsung or an iPhone. so I'll say that our approach is to bring to the control room and we started to give up, I am tablet to the technical group. So with geologists, engineers, supervisor, that's how we start slow. But obviously I we're, our goal is to get to that, scheduled or where every miner has their next task in a tablet or phone or something.
Martin Provencher:Yeah. and what we see, a lot of companies are leveraging those mobile devices mainly. And then most of the time we see, they start with the maintenance crew, a electrician, electrical people, and you call people in what is it from a visual inspection perspective. if they want to take notes on for the maintenance, a planner or the reliability engineer, this is what we see a lot of companies I've already presented that, another great example I can share is with Newcrest mining in Australia. they shared a very good presentation. They actually won a technology award, with that present date, with what they've done there. it helped them increase the throughput by, let me see here, 650,000 tons in the first six months. So it's pretty impressive what they have done. So basically in a nutshell, I won't get into all the details here, but in a nutshell, what they did is they, of course, they collected the data. And they presented it as a step-by-step approach and it's free, really interesting the way they presented it. first they need, you need to connect to the data source. You need to collect the data. This is exactly what they presented. Then analyze that data. Of course, like I said earlier with descriptive analytics, with people looking at the data and that's where they're using, they're leveraging different technologies. tablets, phones, even glasses, so they're leveraging all those technology depending on who needs to have access to what data. And then of course after that, they're leveraging artificial intelligence. And this is the use case that they have presented, using machine learning to help them improve their, crushed or been, issues that they were having. So without getting into the details of this specific use case, but talking about the mobility aspect, I think a great example of leveraging data. if glasses are the optimal way for you to see the information, then that should be it. it exists. it's there today. And what I always refer to, 10 years ago, I was doing conferences on health and safety. And I was talking about the fact that we should be able to predict the safety issues with all the gaming technology that exists on the market today, it should be used actually for the industry, for the mining industry and the mining industry. And now we see it coming slowly, because in gaming, you, people already know the movements that you're doing. it's not people, but the system is able to detect the movement you're doing is able to detect, the weight that you can carry and things like that. So it's pretty impressive what technology is available today. It's just a matter of how can we leverage that? from a mining operations perspective. but the example with Eucharist, with those glasses, those phones tablets usage is a very good one.
Greg Sandblom:thanks. Thanks for the insight to Martin, Millan, and Roland. And a time goes by fast. We're already at the top of the hour. so I did want to reach out to, people with questions. I don't see any posted at this point, but, I think, it's been marvelous insight, but three of you, I really appreciate it. And I think some great followup discussions can happen, as well, going forward with our next few sessions. I think we teased upon some of the things that we'll be talking about in more detail in the session in June and August. I hope that everybody's interested in, in the technical chats we had today and how that will grow into, how this data is being used and how it can, provide more value to, to, to our mining companies across. in closing again, thank you to Millan, Martin, and Roland for all their valuable insight. thanks to Neha from PACE for helping us put all this together. And she's the coordinator in the background. and finally, BDT is looking for additional sponsorship. there's five other streams. there's a community and collaboration stream for building mines in the remote areas. development and design for these remote mines is a, is another, stream methods and machinery. So what can considerations for the mining methods that you will. when building out mobile equipment for instance, and what already exists, power and possibilities for generating power in remote locations. And, finally people in partnerships, where do we access qualified, workforce and so on. so if you are interested in being a panelist or being a sponsor, in these streams please contact Neha. I think everybody knows how to get a hold of Neha and finally, please share, the podcast link at listen.Bdt.network once again, thank you for everybody involved in today's session, and I hope we provided you with some, insight into how to get data from your operations, into the hands of your users.
Martin Provencher:Thanks very much. Thank you.