In late February, engineering giant GE completed the spin-off of its GE Transportation business unit, which was merged with global transportation and logistics company Wabtec.
As part of the transaction, GE sold a portion of GE Transportation assets to Wabtec, spun off a portion of GE Transportation to GE shareholders, and GE Transportation in turn merged with a wholly owned subsidiary of Wabtec.
The combined firm now has access to Wabtec's range of freight, transit and electronics products and GE Transportation's equipment, services and digital solutions within locomotives, mining, marine, stationary power and drilling applications.
GE Transportation brought with it the Digital Mine business area, which combines a suite of technologies to connect mining assets and monitor their performance.
This group, now as part of Wabtec, is collaborating with software company Webalo, which offers a UX (user experience) platform and industrial app infrastructure for frontline workers.
Webalo's connected worker and control tower functionality will be integrated with Wabtec's Digital Mine operations performance management solution. This will offer better visibility of the large amounts of data captured on-site, as Webalo's platform is able to operate in the face of large volumes of real-time transactions by thousands of users.
Doug Hanson, general manager for Digital Mine from Wabtec, explained that the "operations performance management solutions are designed to improve plant productivity through advanced process control and analytics".
"With the Webalo integration, we are enhancing this solution and enabling operators to visualise detailed and actionable information, rapidly update and disseminate key performance indicators (KPI's) and make more informed decisions," he added.
Webalo CEO Peter Price said: "Our collaboration with Wabtec allows us to better serve the mining industry by enabling frontline workers to simplify and improve their daily activities with intelligently managed workflows and real-time access to actionable analytics, alerts and notifications.
"We are helping mine operators realise the value of untapped data, draw insights and enable action in real time that allows for greater operational control and improved business productivity."
The technology is currently in use by mining companies operating in Africa and Australia.
