Top Mining Trends Of 2022

Metals and Mining Review | Monday, August 22, 2022

Remote operations and commissioning, health and safety, and collaboration are trends that will continue to top the agendas of the mining company

FREMONT, CA: Remote operations and commissioning, health and safety, collaboration. They may be trends that will continue to top the agendas of mining company CEOs, OEMs, and service providers in 2022 – all underpinned and enabled by electrification, digital, and automation technologies.

Industry 4.0 in the form of artificial intelligence (AI), the industrial internet of things (IIoT), and data analytics continue to transform every facet of mining, improving visualization of the entire production cycle, optimizing throughput, reducing downtime, and helping operators to reduce their carbon footprint.

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1. Remote possibilities enabled by digitalization

What was born of necessity has become a highly effective way to minimize set-up time, reduce labor and equipment costs, better response times to minimize downtime, and mitigate health and safety risks.

Remote commissioning is allowed by improved connectivity, enabling seamless engagement between vendor and client, who may be thousands of miles apart. But with this enhanced connectivity comes the need to protect proprietary data and leverage the power of the cloud and data analytics. For this reason, solutions are set to increase, helping customers unlock the value of contextualized data from disparate databases using IIoT to reduce downtime and optimize productivity.

2. Maintaining safety first

Health and safety remain a business imperative for the extractive industries.

Digitalization has an important part to play. In both open-pit and underground operations, higher connectivity equals greater safety. For instance, increasingly, workers are connected to a central operations hub in real-time using short-interval geolocation tools managed by an algorithm or from an integrated remote COC(Collaborative Operations Centre).

Mining operators may trail staff through geolocation devices in smartphones and wearables, enabling them to pinpoint their location in proximity to dangerous locations or processes, such as vehicles.

This trend is set to continue. In all areas of the underground environment, digital and automation solutions protect personnel from harm and make conditions safer and more amenable.

3. Collaboration is key to driving change.

Collaboration across the supply chain – especially early in the project lifecycle – is not just suitable but essential to hit targets.

According to mining customers, increasingly, what they want from OEMs and technology vendors is not one-off solutions to isolated issues but instead more standardized, vendor-agnostic solutions built around alliances of key technology suppliers and OEMs, each with their domain expertise, to jointly develop solutions that evolve and offer real value for money in respect of ROI – rather than one Party is responsible for the whole project scope.

Nevertheless, the important point to be made here ties in with the trend above for increased collaboration between operators, OEMs, and technology vendors. For mining companies to understand the full benefits of technology advancements, all parties must play their part. Continued collaboration and evolution are happening around green energy and the value chain to ensure the energy sources put into mining equipment are also sustainable.

After all, advancements in charging capability are only helpful if mines have the necessary infrastructure, vehicles, and software to take advantage. Hence, we must all pull together in the same direction.

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