Bridging the divide-together

The partnership between Sandvik and Cisco Systems is a match made in mining heaven, delivering productivity and safety improvements to underground mines everywhere. The future of mining is a digital one. Innovations such as automation and data analysis have been shown to improve safety, productivity and sustainability management in the mining industry. A survey of mining companies conducted by professional services firm EY showed that 84 percent of participants “are considering having, have started or already have digital as part of their day-to-day business”. Nevertheless, wanting to digitalize your operations and successfully and securely accomplishing the task are two separate issues, and it is critical that mining companies develop a clear approach to bridging the divide. By offering a pre-integrated and tested solution, customers will benefit from accelerated time to deployment and reduced risk. It is under these conditions that the partnership between two global leaders in their respective fields was born. With its cutting-edge automated and digitalized mining solutions, Sandvik Mining and Rock Technology offers the equipment and knowledge to boost safety and productivity for its customers. And Cisco Systems, world leader in IoT connectivity solutions and network technology, has the expertise, experience and tools to provide reliable and secure network underground. It was a match made in mining heaven. Merging competencies “When you think of mining operations, specifically underground mining, for those operations to become more effective and safer they will need the expertise of both companies,” says Jarkko Ruokojärvi, automation global business development manager at Sandvik. “Our collaboration has successfully married mining automation solutions and digitalization applications to robust and reliable connectivity that gets the different resources to communicate and interact with each other.” It is a classic example of IT/OT convergence, where the integration of information technology systems used for data-centric computing is paired with the operational technology systems used to monitor devices, events and processes. Cisco’s validated design provides an architecture that will ensure a robust, reliable and secure network for Sandvik’s automated equipment to run on. “Cisco provides the most secure and reliable IoT portfolio on the market. By offering a pre-integrated and tested solution, the customers will benefit from accelerated time to deployment and reduced risk. It’s a win-win-win situation as not only do our two companies benefit, but most importantly so does the customer,” says Charles Ferriera, Design-In partnership manager, Cisco. A robust network serving powerful equipment Over the last year, the collaboration has been delivering safety, productivity and cost-effective benefits to customers. Take the Sandvik offering AutoMine®, for instance. It offers autonomous and teleremote control of underground mining equipment to impart these benefits. In order for it to function fluidly, AutoMine requires robust network connectivity. Going forward, further mine digitalization will see an expansion from small dedicated networks to mine-wide ones in order to enable overall optimization of processes. “In the past, if all you needed to run was a laptop underground you could use any network,” says Ken Vanthielen, Cisco IoT manager of business development. “Now your entire mining operation relies on that network, so it’s extremely important that the network is secure and reliable. We have a reference design in pl Sandvik AutoMine requires robust network connectivity in order to optimize operations ace the best part of which is that it has been rigorously tested by us and at Sandvik’s underground test mine in Tampere, Finland. So, when customers deploy this solution, we are putting our stamp on it that it is based on a Cisco tested and verified design. We are essentially de-risking their architecture.” The collaboration presents customers with a high level of knowledge of the communication technologies as well as the automation applications because together, both companies and their solutions address customers’ challenges. Cisco Systems Founded in 1984 by Stanford University computer scientists Leonard Bosack and Sandy Lerner, Cisco Systems is an American multinational technology company. Cisco specializes in developing, manufacturing and selling networking hardware, software, telecommunications equipment and other high-tech services and products. Another such solution – Your Tech Master Doctor – collects and analyzes data to help customers see what is happening and to make informed decisions in real time. By enabling short interval control, customers can measure what all their resources are doing and adjust the process accordingly to make production more effective. Part 2 coming soon.