8:30

Registration and networking

9:00

Using a Unified Safety Case to drive Interoperability between Autonomous Equipment
Hume Saunders Manager of Automation Platforms, Rio Tinto

The Rio Tinto Mine of Future concept has always considered interoperability of mine fleet mobile equipment as a corner stone of the vision. This vision has been realized in the Rio Tinto developed Drill Automation system and lessons learnt from the process has shown that the development of technical requirements and system validation has been strongly supported by a very clear understanding of operational safety case and hazards associated with drilling. It is expected that these hazards are fairly uniform across surface mining industry so can provide a good, non-technology centric or IP sensitive starting point for driving interoperability between systems. It is not inconceivable that existing operational safety cases can be extrapolated to other fleet types with goal of defining a global set of hazards.

9:30

Is it Time to Kill IT
Mark O’Brien Manager – Digital Transformation, CITIC Pacific Mining

The historical separation of IT and OT, sometimes divided by a great deal of animosity, and the ever-increasing convergence of IT and OT from both a business and technical perspective raises some serious questions about operating models and suggests some new ways to restructure mining company technology groups to get maximum benefits off lower costs.

10:00

Coffee break

10:30

Introducing the next level of collaboration and innovation for Field Robotics and Remote Operations Asset Management
Andrew Scott Co-Chair – Field Robotics Cluster, Field Robotics and Remote Operations Asset Management (ROAM) Cluster

11:00

PANEL > Remote Operations Asset Management
Andrew Scott Vice-Chair Working Groups, GMG (Moderator) Jean Ferreira Co-Founder, RaptorTech Andrew Hall Manager Strategy, Planning & Governance, Roy Hill Jon Sciortino Mining Sector Lead, NovaSystems

12:00

Lunch

13:00

Safety by Separation – The use of Telepresence to keep personnel out of the line-of-fire
Joe Cronin Operations Manager, Australian Droid + Robot

The execution of manual tasks in production areas cause interruptions to the production process (particularly to automation) and expose personnel to hazards such as ground fall, mud and fines rush and traffic interactions. The use of Telepresence technologies to remotely complete mine inspection and remediation activities dramatically reduces the exposure of personnel to hazards and reduces the interruption to production. Telepresence allows the operator to be completely removed from the hazard while still being able to execute the task at hand. While some would argue that separation is simply another form of isolation (an engineering control), it differs, as it is a “failsafe” methodology where a failure of the Telepresence technology will not result in the hazard and the operator being collocated. The technologies that have matured over the last five to ten years will allow a much higher penetration of Telepresence into the underground mining industry and a greater potential to separate operators from hazards.

13:30

Functional Safety for Autonomous Equipment
Gareth Topham Principal Functional Safety, Rio Tinto

14:00

Deliver Today Reinvent Tomorrow
Vanessa Torres Chief Technology Officer, South 32

14:30

Interoperability and Functional Safety Acceleration Strategy
Andrew Scott Vice-Chair Working Groups, GMG

15:00

Coffee

15:30

PANEL > Accelerating Interoperability
Andrew Scott Vice-Chair Working Groups, GMG (Moderator) Tim Skinner President, SMART Systems Group Kalev Ruberg VP Digital Systems & CIO, Teck Resources Helius Guimaraes Digital Transformation Leader, Alcoa

16:30

Wrap Up
Heather Ednie Managing Director, GMG

8:45

Welcome and update
Heather Ednie Managing Director, GMG

9:00

Geoscience Innovation at AngloGold Ashanti
Dale Harris Geoscience Information Manager, AngloGold Ashanti

With an ever-increasing computing capability amongst our geoscientists and an increase in the available data, it has become essential to have a modern and accessible platform to innovate on. Geoscience Data systems at AngloGold Ashanti have served us well for the last 20 years; however, they have to be in a continuing state of review and adjustment to align with the increased data demands that reflect the increasing reliance on data-driven decisions. The platform is being updated to take advantage of the many innovations that have been identified in the geophysical, geometallurgical, geochemical and geological disciplines.

9:30

Triple Zero Mining
George Long Digital Mining Lead, Accenture

10:00

Coffee break

10:30

How to derisk and speed up time to value for innovation
Michelle Ash Chair, GMG

11:00

Panel > Evolving Skills and Workforce Requirements of the Digital Mine
Andrew Scott Vice-Chair Working Groups, GMG (Moderator) Melinda Hodkiewicz Fellow for Engineering for Remote Operations, BHP Aaron Schier General Manager CORE Innovation Hub Peter Clarke General Manager Industry Engagement, METS Ignited 

12:00

Lunch

13:00

Innovation Putting Ideas to Work
Kalev Ruberg VP Digital Systems & CIM, Teck Resources

13:30

Understanding the Integration Landscape in Operations
Pieter Lottering Founding Partner, Global io

After nearly two decades of piloting and implementing Integrated Operations programs in mining and oil & gas, there are now multiple examples of programs that have continued to provide excellent ongoing value for their respective organisations, and some examples of clear failures. More often though these programs aren’t performing at capacity, with the wide-spread belief that it can do better if some magic condition can just be achieved. In this session, we will discuss an approach that some companies are taking to help them define these opportunities in great actionable detail, and also how they decide on when additional integration efforts stop adding value. We will also discuss the potential value of this approach to production value chains that have not deliberately embarked on an Integrated Operations journey, and what can be done to get ready for future technologies that require relatively high levels of organisational integration to succeed.

14:00

Ma’aden’s Digital Transformation Challenges and the Way Forward
David Scott Taylor Director – Innovation and Digitalisation, Ma’aden

Ma’aden is undertaking a holistic digital transformation across Gold, Aluminium and Phosphate businesses covering 7500 employees that is run by a Digitalisation Center of Excellence with 8 business wide Digital Taskforce teams to create synergies of opportunities and multiply the benefits across the business. All with a central team of two!. We share our digital journey and show the value of embedding digitalisation into the business from a top down and bottom up approach.

14:30

Coffee break

15:00

Breakout Session > Innovation Priorities

16:00

Semantics – a Necessary Tool for Maintenance 4.0
Melinda Hodkiewicz Fellow for Engineering for Remote Operations, BHP

Maintenance management practices underpin the A$205 billion/year of export earnings from Australia’s resources sector and have changed little in the last 20 years. There are huge ongoing efforts to bring computational methods, statistics, and artificial intelligence to determine how, when and why maintenance is conducted. However evidence of positive return on investment is patchy. One of the contributors to slow uptake by site maintenance personnel of these methods is a lack of validation of these algorithms in the field and hence a lack of trust. Validation is challenging as much of the data necessary to do this is tied up in inspection and repair documents. Melinda will discuss how natural language processing and ontologies are key to unlocking information available in maintenance documents. Being able to do this at scale will enable validation of Industry 4.0 efforts such as predictive maintenance, at scale. Machine readability of unstructured texts will enable decision support solutions for activities that need a human-in-the-loop for maintenance management and automate activities that don’t. She will report on global efforts ongoing in this area.

16:30

UFR – A Robotics Development Case Study
Jeff Sterling Founder and Managing Director, Universal Field Robotics

Universal Field Robots has developed an autonomy platform which we integrate into mass produced construction machines making them like factory robots that escape the factory. Our case study outlines our work collaborating with Imdex limited to develop and test a robotic system for deploying the Imdex sensor to log mine blastholes. In less than 6 months from commencing we are now out on mine sites logging blast holes.

17:00

Wrap Up
Heather Ednie Managing Director, GMG