The company believes that when it comes to using digitalisation to improve productivity and lower energy usage, it is crucial to combine the power of both digitalised physical assets and data-led decisionmaking solutions.

Rebecca Siwale, global director of performance and digital services at FLSmidth, said that this versatility helped the company build out its digital services.

"Digitalisation as a service means we are focusing on optimising a customer's operations to improve productivity, decrease costs, and deliver better results based on technical analysis and an understanding of their strategic goals and challenges," Siwale said.

"FLSmidth has the knowledge, experience, technology, connectivity and performance of the complete lifecycle of products and systems. Thisleaves us well positioned to help customers boost productivity, cut costs and minimise their environmental footprint."

Local knowledge

While digital transformation programmes depend on global technologies and connectivity across vast distances, Siwale noted that local experience and a deep understanding of site-specific requirements were crucial aspects of any customer's journey.

"No two mine sites are the same. Each mine location has different characteristics, commodities and requirements. And each business has different needs based on its priorities and levels of digital maturity."

"Because of this, developing a close collaboration with the knowledge partner is essential, and our service expertise can bring the most efficiency out of a solution's development and deployment. Our regional structure is crucial, we have positioned ourselves close to the customer, we can not only fault find in our equipment, but can advise on maintenance strategies and spare parts optimisation, and ensure better reliability and lower overall operational costs.

"What we see is a combination of digital and human capabilities. Local human capabilities provide great value."

She noted that FLSmidth took care to develop solutions that can integrate with or incorporate a miner's existing platforms, instead of requiring that an entire system be switched over to the FLSmidth solution.

Deep integrations

This is particularly important for asset-wide digital transformation programmes, said Siwale.

"Historically, the focus in mining has been on individual pieces of equipment and process islands. But significant benefits come from combining data from an entire operation or site. This is where you can unlock the massive potential of optimisation in process efficiency and in resource use, such as water and energy, which will help cut costs and reduce environmental footprints.

"When we talk about process-optimisation solutions and how excellent they are at decreasing energy consumption in minerals and across concentrators - through the advanced and intelligent control of these technologies - it really makes sense for us to run this across the entire plant."

Siwale said three significant trends were combining and accelerating to convince miners to speed up digital adoption: a growing talent supply gap, supplychain automation and sustainability goals.

"On skills and talent, in the mining industry, the growing maturity of digital and the socialisation of mining operations are attracting different skill sets and a younger generation. Predictive maintenance, offsite monitoring, process control and remote operations are all increasingly common. Mining employees can work remotely, away from some tough locations."

"We could also spin this onto gender and diversity, with women being the primary caregivers and some of the mine locations are extremely remote - digital can have a great impact."

On supply-chain automation, Siwale said mining's digitalisation is playing catch-up with other sectors but that the potential for progress is significant.

"Supply-chain automation is already a reality in many industries. And in mining, it is starting to speed up. Digital provides a great opportunity to streamline your purchasing and supply processes. For instance, in recent years, we completed our first touchless delivery of parts to our customers, providing enhanced lead times and more accurate order handling. So, this is just an example, but we are also seeing our customers move quicker in that space."

She added that digitalisation was speeding up because miners were looking at both the short and long-term when it came to sustainability.

"Regarding innovation and R&D, new technologies are starting to deliver the productivity and sustainability those companies need. But many need more time before they can reach the market. They need to be tested, upscaled and piloted."

"Digital solutions can offer quick wins; they're easier to implement, even for an existing operation. So, most miners are also quickly moving to digitalise some of the existing technology, instead of moving into a different area of technology

Rapid real-life wins

This feeds into the notion that ‘low-hanging fruit' in mining operations are prime candidates for a quick digitalisation process.

"Examples of this are advanced process control, asset health and asset-optimisation solutions," Siwale said. "In asset optimisation, for instance, we have specific solutions, like the LoadIQ [Smart sensor technology], which as an example, on a single mill at a Peruvian copper mine, resulted in increased production of 11%, reduction in power consumption of 2.3%, and an increase in energy efficiency (KWh/tonne) of 14%."

"There are also carbon savings from using this technology on the mill. In a year, it was equivalent to removing the greenhouse gases of about 8 million miles driven by an average passenger vehicle.

"Another example is in advanced process control. Our ECS/ProcessExpert (PXP) solution has an insights analytics module that automatically converts your operational benefits into meaningful KPIs. For example, your CO2 footprint benchmarks.

"These KPIs are then visualised using a predefined dashboard delivered with the solution; the solution also calculates and compares the KPIs when the system was in operation versus when it wasn't. In doing so, you can clearly show how PXP enables a more sustainable operation. Additionally, a key benefit of PXP is through process optimisation; it has been shown to reduce the consumption of energy and fuel by 3-5%.

"These are ready solutions with proven value and performance gains, I think they are low-hanging fruits that miners can quickly take advantage of."

Mining still has vast potential to tap into the power of digital transformations across an entire enterprise, Siwale said.

"Boston Consulting Group (BCG) found in a recent study that the metals and mining industries are approximately 30-40% less digitally mature than other industries. BCG highlighted several reasons for this discrepancy, ranging from a phasing out of customised solutions, to a lack of agile methods to deploy digital skills to the remote location of mines, and therefore, poor network bandwidth. But also, a general cultural resistance.

"Truly, these are valid points. From my perspective, a lack of collaboration is maybe the fundamental weakness, yet this is the key to unlocking digital value.

"Cross-party collaboration has been vital in other industries in creating a digital ecosystem and standardisation, and miners, through working with FLSmidth, can develop a long-term strategy and develop a holistic approach that covers and integrates the entire process flow sheet. This full flowsheet approach compounds the benefits from each area. A fully digitalised, integrated and dataoptimised mining flow sheet should be the ultimate goal for miners. And we can make that happen."