VIDEO - Chile's mining industry way behind in digital transformation

The mining industry is paying lip service to innovation but not putting its money where its mouth is. That, more or less, was the consensus at a mining 4.0 event hosted by RMSE Analytics in Chilean capital Santiago.

Out of 61 underground mining processes in the global industry, only five have been automated so far, and most of these involve transportation of the minerals, said Javier Ruiz del Solar, executive director of the Advanced Mining Technology Center (AMTC) at the Universidad de Chile.

"It's the industry that talks the most about innovation and does the least," said Gonzalo Restini, executive director at FMA Industrial, which manufactures mining equipment that it exports to 27 countries. He cites the sector's focus on production, internal resistance, indifference and risk aversion as the roadblocks to innovation.

VIDEO - Watch the debate at the event

Interoperability between communications and information systems should be maximized in all mining processes, with instruments linking suppliers and mining companies through standard protocols, said Alfie Ulloa, executive secretary at Chile’s national productivity commission, an independent government agency.

"Society has undergone its digital transformation. Companies are running a bit behind, and the state is way behind and will not be able to accompany businesses in their transformation. It will not be able to regulate technology," added Ulloa.

Juan Jara, CTO of nonprofit Fundación Chile's InteropMining program, also stressed the need for interoperability. "There are information silos at mines."

Jara said Fundación Chile will soon present an autonomous truck interoperability standard before the ISO. "It would free us from having to find solutions in only one brand. If I want to run 'blue' autonomous trucks at my mine, the dispatch needs to be blue as well. That carries a huge economic impact, with millions of dollars at play in the tenders. We're proposing the architecture."

Agustín Costa, managing director and partner at Boston Consulting Group, said that change management is a key part of the industry's digital transformation. 

"Technology can factor in many more variables that the operator may then ignore to follow its own intuition, much like a driver disregards route suggestions from Waze," he said. "Change management is essential. By testing and piloting, you can begin to convince yourself that the tool is better than the intuitive interpretation."

In contrast with other industries that have gone through major technological disruptions, such as retail, banking and media, the mining sector has not felt threatened by technology and that's why the pace of its digital transformation has been much slower, Costa added.

While the digital transformation of the mine itself may be running at a snail's pace, the miners' management and administrative operations have embraced technology. 

"While we haven't introduced great technological changes, we've digitized our organization's structural processes through SAP," said Juan Quispe, asset maintenance corporate manager at Antofagasta Minerals.

"Change management has been our main technological challenge. Our maintenance profile is currently at 73% preventive. Our goal is to be 90% predictive. But it's really expensive to become predictive."