Digital solutions for the mining industry

Productivity and operational excellence are key to stay competitive in the minerals industry. For this, modern information technology offers new possibilities: Leading minerals companies globally are continually investing in state-of-the-art IT technologies in order to increase mineral levels with lower personnel and operational costs.

For greater flexibility, improved decision-making, shorter system downtime and less unproductive hours, we provide you with tailor-made MES (Manufacturing Execution System) solutions. You gain comprehensive transparency along your entire value chain and at all facilities, e.g. from the mines to the railway and port facilities. In concrete terms, operating performance indicators from across all sites can be displayed and compared to each other. To make this possible, our MES solutions are capable of processing a large amount of real-time data and serving thousands of users simultaneously. The high level of integration with automation systems reduces unproductive hours, as data are provided immediately and reliably and less manual work like typing is required. Additionally, a single system allows the standardization of concepts, workflows, and indicators in different units of the company. All operational expertise of these units will be gathered in a digital database, facilitating the replication of the best practices and internal benchmarking.

To optimize throughput times and guarantee requested quality output, storage and transport systems are an important part of advanced facilities for the transfer of bulk materials. What’s more: With an unmanned operation of stackers, reclaimers, and combined machines, you can achieve higher performance, increased accuracy, full utilization of the stockpile area, and optimized energy consumption compared to manned operation.

Our advanced automation solutions secure autonomous operation of your stackers and reclaimers. Thus, they help to reduce your operational costs and achieve a smoother and safer operation with less wear and tear of the mechanical parts of the equipment. The core element of the management system is the stockpiles 3D model with a record of both quantity and quality of materials. The model is updated regularly with data delivered by stackers and reclaimers. You also benefit from higher safety as all staff work is performed remotely: After working area and parameters for each job are specified, the details are calculated automatically and approved by the operator – then the job is transferred to the equipment. The rest is automatic. To prevent collisions and therefore equipment outages, the stockpile equipment comes with a protection system that uses data were delivered by sensors. Thanks to this collision protection system, there have been no incidents reported since Siemens solutions are implemented more than eight years ago.

With decreasing erection phases, there is no time to waste in the construction and design of open-pit mines – particularly when it comes to dimensioning belt conveyor systems. But to reveal the dynamic behavior of the whole system and to explore and improve how the individual belt conveyor components work together, it needs more than the common calculation methods.

That’s why we work with digital simulation tools to develop your new systems as well as to study the behavior and interaction of the belt conveyor mechanics and drive solution in your existing systems: By means of simulation, it is possible to investigate changes, influences, and consequences in the system performance during modernization. We use the simulation results internally for planning and commissioning the drive solutions, or provide them to potential operators or system builders. Simulation simplifies the selection of the suitable drive solution and controller in order to optimize the operational and productivity ratios. In greenfield projects, engineers have the information they need to decide, for example, whether a drive solution with a hydraulic coupling is sufficient, or whether a drive solution with a frequency converter is more suitable. Simulation also allows improvements to be made in system operation and to minimize the idle time.

Availability is the basis for a productive mining business. Equipment failures or losses in performance have to be avoided by all means. And that’s where our digital asset health management comes in: It is basically consisting of the enrichment of condition monitoring systems with analytic and predictive functionalities as well as self-learning abilities. Its purpose is to recognize long-term changes to the general condition of mission-critical mining applications during their operational lifetime and to accordingly derive specific recommendations for conducting maintenance tasks in time.

Our asset health and performance management is generally based on a productive combination of high-end data infrastructure for data acquisition, and preprocessing, analytical tools, and methodology. The full potential of the above may be leveraged through digitalized services and lifecycle service packages. Your benefits include detection of problems at an early stage of their development as well as precise diagnosis for support in effective maintenance.

Our operations intelligence software  collects, analyzes and presents operational and business data, thereby enabling real-time performance management, and decision support – for better productivity and competitiveness. This data transparency can help mining companies optimize their entire supply chain, and, where necessary, rethink their operating model. For example, how to deal with secondary processes. Whether they should keep, sell, or expand their water treatment, power generation, etc. Or whether they should consider a greater collaboration with their business partners, including shared infrastructures.

Minerals Automation Standard is based on SIMATIC PCS 7, our open, flexible, and scalable distributed control system (DCS) designed to ensure highest productivity and reliability. With its integrated safety, industrial-security, and energy management concept, it combines all of the requirements needed to protect humans, machinery and the environment – and paves the way to the digital enterprise. The integrated Advanced Process Library (APL) offers the best route for gaining higher operational, and engineering efficiency. As such, it also paves the way to enhanced competitiveness in the mining industry. Get information on Minerals Automation Standard.