Like automotive industry, emerging advanced technologies are helping mining industry to upgrade as well as digitise their operations. According to various report, India is one of the largest exporters of iron ore, chromite, bauxite, mica and manganese. India is ranked fifth among mineral producing countries in terms of volume of production and was responsible for around a quarter of our GDP. However, many challenging factors along with safety and security of underground working environment are leading to uncertainty regarding the future of mining in India.

Today, OEMs are looking at advanced technologies such as Industrial IoT (IIoT), automation, digitalisation in order to eliminate these challenges. These next generation technologies play a massive role in mining operations by ensuring safety, security and connectivity of underground working environment. By adding efficient automation, sensors and connectivity to equipment, mining is expected to largely benefit in terms of enhanced productivity, safety, improved efficiency and asset utilisation. Although use of technology has positive impact on business, its adoption is not too smooth and creates many challenges for equipment OEMs, who are always looking at ways to overcome barriers in order to stay competitive. Globally, many mining OEMs are evaluating connected mining on their IIoT journey. Moreover, Indian OEMs too are evaluating challenges, benefits, and have started evaluating technologies. Everyone has understood that early movers will gain huge competitive and sustainable advantages over slow movers.

Challenges faced by mining OEMs
New technologies bring in new unexplored challenges and similar is the case with IIoT. Based on industry or geography, these challenges could be diverse. Mining OEMs too face plenty of challenges slowing down technology adoptions. Non-clarity about investments and return on investments (RoIs), data security, poor network coverage, lack of standardisations etc are few challenges, which are not unique to India. IIoT in mining is facing other challenges too, which are elaborated below with the possible solutions to alleviate them.

Predictive maintenance for productive mining
Equipment maintenance is one of the important aspects for mining OEMs as it consumes major budget. Maintenance is not only important for smooth equipment operation, but also for operational safety. Every mining site generally follows a unique maintenance schedule to ensure that every equipment is working as desired and capable of efficiently working throughout the day. However, equipment undergoes immense stress often creating situations of unforeseen breakdown. When such unplanned failure occurs, depending on the severity of the fault and complexity of the asset, results in reduced productivity or even bring it to a standstill. Mining sites are often located in most remote locations with extreme weather conditions, least accessibility and communication difficulties. In such conditions, it is clear that maintenance requires more proactive approach than normal routine maintenance. In addition, the cost involved in maintaining equipment is very high, and the time needed to service them on the field is large. The remote locations also make reporting of errors and breakdown difficult as some places do not even have network connectivity. Predictive maintenance is the solutions mining sectors is effectively adopting in order to improve productivity and reduce unplanned downtimes, as it provides them an ability to anticipate failures before they bring the entire equipment to a standstill. It helps to maximise availability using data acquired through condition monitoring constantly monitoring equipment health and recognising problems early and preventing unplanned downtime.

B&R’s X90 module allows mining OEMs to continuously monitor the status of their mobile equipment. The results help determine exactly which components require maintenance and when. Its typical applications include continuous monitoring of rotating or moving components such as hydraulic assemblies, belts, bearings, gears, motors and other mechanics. The processed sensor data is also available for further use in the application. B&R’s modular X90 control and I/O system is equipped with condition monitoring functions so that problems or faults can be detected in their early stages and can be corrected before they result in unplanned downtime. Condition-based predictive maintenance maximises equipment availability, saves considerable cost of outages and unplanned service calls. Most mines are environmentally challenging to work in. Dust, moisture, water run-off, and outdoor exposure to sunlight, wind and rain might affect the smooth working of equipment. However, all products in the X90 control family are designed for use in such harsh industrial environments. They can handle operating temperatures from -40 to +85°C and are resistant to vibration, shock, salt, UV light and oil.

Improving safety and security with remote maintenance
Mines are spread over a large area and often in remote locations, with operation and maintenance being critical. Advanced technology solutions such as remote monitoring and maintenance have helped reduce massive operational costs faced by mining OEMs. Remote maintenance solution from B&R makes diagnostics and maintenance of equipment easier than ever. The solution utilises the latest IT and security standards and allows for significant savings with low investment costs. Equipment downtime results in losses and in such cases every minute counts. If a service technician is not available on-site, it takes hours or days before expert assistance is available. With B&R remote maintenance, a technician can connect, run diagnostics, adjust parameters and resolve errors – all in a matter of moments. With B&R’s remote maintenance, a service technician can access machines from anywhere in the world to retrieve logbook entries, application data and much more. Moreover, the remote maintenance solutions can be used to log field data from equipment, which can be used to prepare trends providing a graphical representation of the situation on-site. This solution uses queuing protocols such as MQTT, OPC UA or AMQP, which make it possible for storing data on the controller and sending to the cloud when the network is available. Coupling predictive maintenance with remote maintenance helps OEMs to access equipment from their offices and get complete details about its operations.

Keeping data safe and secure
With increased adoption of IIoT technologies, it is expected to generate huge volumes of data. Analysing this data will provide useful information by identifying inadequacies and waste in existing operations. Advanced data analytics gives insights on past actions and help mining companies to predict future occurrences. Today, managing safety and security of this data are new challenges, which are comfortably resolved by using open source networking protocols such as MQTT, OPC UA and AMQP. For safe and secure data transfer between field and cloud, B&R relies on these vendor-independent communication protocols.

OPC UA is an open source communication protocol widely used in industrial automation applications as well as has made its way into off-highway equipment. It is based on the client-server principle and allows seamless vertical and horizontal connectivity. The protocol is platform-independent and features built-in security mechanisms. Since OPC UA is flexible and completely independent, it is regarded as an ideal communication protocol for vertical and horizontal connectivity. B&R’s support for such open technologies helps in reducing the total cost of ownership and provides a common platform for networking due to the vendor independent nature of these protocols.

In addition, B&R provides robust, real-time communication on field level and in-equipment connectivity based on open source platforms. CAN, CANopen, ISOBUS and Ethernet POWERLINK, which are widely used and accepted globally in off-highway equipment for field to controller communications. For equipment-to-equipment and equipment-to-cloud communication, B&R trusts in OPC UA, OPC UA over TSN, MQTT and AMQP for secure and safe connectivity to cloud. The vendor neutral approach has helped various vendors adopt such technologies in their controllers, actuators, cameras and other peripheral devices at negligible investment. This helps OEMs to connect various devices on a single network, enhancing diagnostics, reducing maintenance and providing seamless connectivity to the cloud. Even cloud platforms have already adopted such open source communication for interfacing with the field devices. OPC UA, Ethernet POWERLINK and MQTT all being open source and Ethernet-based provide the necessary bandwidth for such complex and demanding applications.

Digitalisation paving the path of smart mining
Along with advantages, come various challenges, which Indian OEMs can face while going ahead on the digital journey. Therefore, it is important for organisations to conduct cost-benefit analysis before final implementations. As we are moving forward, advanced technologies will become essential part of mining industry and organisations should consider off-the-shelf modular products rather than customised and low cost solutions. However, the important thing is to take small step towards IIoT implementation, which can change future of an organisation. Digitalisation eliminates the most intensive challenges faced by the mining industry by providing real-time visibility of equipment allowing quick problem solving or preventing it altogether. Digitalisation helps improve operational and functional safety and equipment health. With cutting-edge technology solutions together with open source communication standards, B&R is the right partner for implementing digitised assets and equipment for increased sustainability, flexibility, higher productivity and profitability.

- Pooja Patil, Corporate Communications, B&R Industrial Automation