With iVolve Senior Engineer, Matt Lee

Big data has swept into every industry and now plays an essential part in productivity growth and competition. Research indicates that the digital cluster of 'data, computational power and connectivity' is ripe to shake up the mining sector over the next 10 years.

Research by The McKinsey Global Institute found that Europe as a whole could save $149b on government administration costs and the U.S. could reduce its healthcare expenditure by over 8% if they utilised big data more effectively. With mining companies set to multiply their investment into IT by 5 over the next 3 years, the savings associated with big data, computational power and connectivity are set to sky rocket.

Internet of things and cloud technology are tangible examples of affordable yet powerful storage solutions. Interfacing with the onboard vehicle management system and embedding sensors allows technicians to gather vast amounts of data for analysis and communication amongst machines. This technology is increasingly being applied to other aspects of mining such as vehicle health, production monitoring and visualisation.

iVolve engineer, Matt Lee has recently been working on some new and exciting projects regarding vehicle health and maintenance management.

‘At the moment I'm finishing up a real-time stock pile management system as well as working on a new hardware module to provide a data interface for a whole new class of machines,’ he said.

Where does iVolve come in?

iVolve’s Maintenance Manager helps to tackle some of the problems faced by mining companies today by utilising big data.

‘Maintenance Manager & Tyre Manager provide relevant data in real time to people who need it allowing them to make informed decisions about their operations … customers get to choose what data they capture, so it can be customized or configured to their needs rather than what we assume they need,’ Matt said, ‘This allows us to provide support a lot more efficiently.’

“Maintenance Manager provides big data insights to the fleet's long term health, making maintenance issues easier to predict. It can also provide feedback to change operator behaviour to better look after their machines", Matt said.

Real world outcomes

Big data solutions don’t just provide reports for analysis, they provide real world outcomes.

"Tyres are an expensive commodity in mining, so being able to monitor and predict a potential blow out is game changing", Matt said.

The future of big data

Matt sees the importance of big data in mining for predictive analytics fully integrated with maintenance scheduling. This will allow operators to push out their maintenance schedules without adversely affecting machine integrity.
"With the right system it is easy to get all this data but sites then have to be able to use it and do something with it. We are continuously looking at ways to consume and action this data.”

Big data usage is the future of mining. Not only will it eliminate inefficiencies to increase operational effectiveness, it also gives companies the freedom to make the strategic decisions and reinvent their business model, giving them a competitive edge in the global market.

 

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