Sandvik Mining and Rock Technology has formed an agreement with IBM to jointly develop data-driven productivity and predictive maintenance services for the mining and rock excavation industry.
Under the agreement, Sandvik and IBM will develop advanced analytics solutions to improve safety, maintenance, productivity and operational services of mining and rock excavation equipment.
The growth in onboard instrumentation and data gathering capabilities in heavy equipment is presenting natural resource industries with opportunities to employ advanced analytics and models to identify and resolve productivity issues and improve process optimisation and performance. Deployment of digital technologies is expected to create as much as US$100 billion value to resource-producing companies by 2035.
Sandvik and IBM will be working together to make a clear difference in productivity improvements in mining and rock excavation companies globally. A memorandum of understanding has been signed with the intent of creating market-leading offerings in data-driven productivity and predictive maintenance solutions.
The two companies are already working jointly with selected customers to pilot the concept and commercialise specific solutions. The first wave of work will be done on loaders and trucks, connecting up to 15 units and integrating live data from multiple on- and off-board systems to run the analytic algorithms.
The IBM-Sandvik collaboration will involve the use of advanced analytics, remote monitoring and cognitive technologies to allow natural resource companies to combine equipment and application data from disparate resources and automatically analyse patterns in the data to improve performance and productivity.
This combination of information services, remote data collection and data analysis will enable increased effectiveness by increasing productivity, saving cost and reducing time wastage. It helps mining and rock excavation companies make well-informed decisions regarding production plans and maintenance schedules and provides the opportunity to monitor and improve upon the general utilisation levels of their equipment. This will lead to higher yield at lower cost of ore per tonne. Sandvik stated that it has already seen cost per tonne decreases of 20-50% with some of the latest digital technologies and with this new analytical capability aim to push that even further.
Lars Engström, president of Sandvik Mining and Rock Technology, said: “Sandvik has been working with mining customers on mine automation and remote monitoring of machines for more than 20 years. Our OptiMine and AutoMine solutions are also important systems for data collection and consolidation that provide us with a great platform to get a flying start with IBM analytics solutions. So it is a natural step for us to collaborate with a company like IBM – experts in advanced analytics cognitive computing and modelling – to create even more value to our customers. This collaboration fits well with our service portfolio, which is based on traditional life-cycle, enhanced technical, and business services, all of which are aligned to improve safety, secure competences for mine operations and increase our customers’ productivity.”
Anders Fredholm, VP industrial products industry at IBM Europe, added: “We look forward to taking our expertise in internet of things, advanced analytics and asset management and combining that with Sandvik’s years of experience in developing mining processes and machine technology to build a collaboration around innovation and delivery of smarter digital services offerings for natural resource companies around the globe.”
