Technology centre boosts mines’ digital journey

Sandvik Mining and Rock Solutions has launched a Technology Centre in Harare, Zimbabwe, that aims to assist the region’s mining industry on its journey into the digital future.

According to the centre’s manager Hosea Molife the facility’s key aim is to use digital technology to make mines safer and more productive. The centre has started working with technology-focused customers in underground hard-rock mines locally to help improve productivity.  

“Our starting point was an Optimine implementation for the monitoring and tracking of underground mobile equipment and customer support for a MySandvik project,” says Molife.

He explains that hardware is installed on the equipment together with the software to gather and transmit operational data, allowing mine management to view equipment location and productivity at any time. The data is automatically analysed giving the customer decision-making dashboards.

The Technology Centre can make use of various Sandvik solutions to render the data useful to the customer. These include MySandvik for equipment monitoring using up-to-date information, Optimine for integrating resources and optimising processes and Automine for automating mining activities.

There are already three projects underway at the Technology Centre, says Molife. The MySandvik solution is being provided to 100 machines on one site, while Optimine is being installed on a 76-unit fleet and Automine is initially being used to create a trucking loop for a single unit pilot project.

There has been considerable interest expressed by the region’s mines to date, with potential projects for the Technology Centre emerging in South Africa, Botswana and possibly further afield .

According to Sandvik Mining and Rock Solutions territory manager Ian Bagshaw, applying Sandvik’s digital solutions is the beginning of a  journey for mines, as they move away from paper-based and static data platforms.

“In addition to installing the hardware and software to generate real-time data for mines, we also work closely with customers on how best to utilise the reports,” he says. “Building these reports into their daily operations and real-time decision-making will bring the productivity value-add.”