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Mining is a traditional industry operating operate massive and distributed assets, but it can find many operational, efficiency, and sustainability advantages by incorporating remote access and data connectivity enabled by modern technologies.

My article in the October 2021 issue of Global Mining Review, titled "Accessing Intelligent Data," discusses several ways that Emerson’s controllers, redundant architectures, and other industrial advancements are making this possible—while also paving the way for adoption of autonomous mining methods.

Remote challenges
Because of the physically dispersed nature of mining facilities, remote access is desirable, yet difficult to achieve. Modern PLCs, edge controllers, and wireless communications are enabling each operation to create remote operating centers (ROCs), providing vastly improved visibility. These components can also provide the low-latency field data needed for processing by analytical and asset management systems to provide actionable insights.

Advanced architectures
A primary goal of traditional industrial automation technologies has always been robust local control, but today it is becoming equally important to access the resulting data streams. Typical operational data, extended equipment condition monitoring signals (like temperature, vibration, and energy consumption), and other values gathered in context with each other help a mining organization optimize production and coordinate logistics, supply chains, and maintenance. A comprehensive architecture must support:

• I/O and other field signals of any type
• Edge computing and communications
• Process and asset analytics

Modern PLCs and edge controllers are adept at these tasks and provide other features—such as controller and fieldbus ring redundancy—to ensure maximum uptime and availability.

From the field, to the edge, to the ROC, to the cloud
Scalable designs for mining operations are built on a foundation of:

• Traditional I/O, HART-capable signals, and fieldbus connectivity
• PLC and edge controllers for gathering field data, performing preprocessing to create contextual information, and then transmitting this information it to ROC and cloud resources
• On-premises or cloud-based analytical systems

Mining the future
The methods for improving today’s mining operations, and readying them for tomorrow, are available now.

By implementing modern control technologies, either as new projects or retrofits, mining companies will gain immediate benefits, while future-proofing operations. Deploying complementary field instruments, communication protocols, and controllers in this manner is necessary to enable process optimisation and asset management efforts most effectively.

Proactive mining companies can start small with improved digitalization of a few assets, then scale up and expand across an entire site or organization.