18 Jul GMG Santiago Forum: Mining representatives explored the future of mining and the impact of technologies on industry productivity
The event, organized in collaboration with Interop, is part of a series of events that the Global Mining Guidelines Group organizes alongside local partners around the world to promote collaboration and knowledge sharing around topics facing the industry such as artificial intelligence, interoperability, asset management and others
With the objective of exploring the future of mining, Global Mining Guidelines Group (GMG), in collaboration with Interop, held a forum July 10-11 at Fundación Chile that brought together representatives of the Chilean national mining industry to discuss the opportunities and challenges around implementing strategic technologies such as autonomous equipment, artificial intelligence, the industrial internet of things (IIOT) and systems integration.
The event speakers included Heather Ednie, GMG Managing Director; Laura Mottola, President and CEO of Flow Partners; Hector Valenzuela, Technical Director of Interop; Cristian López, Director of Innovation at Codelco, Nury Briceño, Expert Innovation Engineer at Antofagasta Minerals; Carlos Carmona, General Manager, Hexagon Mining Chile; Andrés Mitnik, Business Director at Expande; and Eduardo Lagos, Manager, Equipment Automation at BHP, among others.
During the event, Heather Ednie, said that “Our industry must accelerate the adoption of new technologies and processes to remain viable, and no one company has the capacity to drive such change alone. We must collaborate with all our global colleagues, support and drive innovative projects, and look outside our industry for proven opportunities to adapt back into our operations.”
“It is good to be back in Santiago working with Interop and Fundación Chile. Our events, which we hold around the world, are designed to foster collaboration. With Chile being a global leader in mining, we see the importance of ensuring that Chilean expertise is well represented in the global mining innovation conversation,” Ednie emphasized.
From his perspective, Juan Jara, Director of Interop, added that “it is extremely important for our program and the local mining ecosystem to engage with global initiatives that seek to facilitate collaboration for developing solutions to common problems through the development of guidelines, the promotion of standards, and the incorporation of technologies to improve productivity in mining businesses.”
He explained that, moreover, “This type of event allows us to develop a better understanding of where mining is moving internationally when it comes to using advanced technologies and the initiatives that exist to implement them. This is not only a key input to the mining digitalization roadmap we are about to launch, but it also allows us, from Interop, to better target [our efforts] to our partners’ and members’ digital transformation plans.”
The last day culminated in a panel on the artificial intelligence revolution and its impact on mining. Panellists were John Atkinson, Professor at Adolfo Ibáñez University; Álvaro Diaz CEO of Indimin; and Felipe Rezende de Carvalho, Solution Consultant at Digital Mine, GE.
During the panel, the experts agreed that the mining industry faces major challenges when it comes to the type of technologies they need to incorporate and that it is key to invest time in identifying the real needs to ensure successful implementations. They also emphasized that it is important to test and incorporate solutions that are already successful in other industries and that the mining industry does not need to be restricted only to those developed by major global mining suppliers.
About GMG
The Global Mining Guidelines Group (GMG) is a network of like-minded companies driving change in the mining industry. Together, we monitor the pulse of the industry and develop multi-disciplinary guidelines to manage risk, enhance performance, design solutions, inform planning and decision making, and save time and money. Our members are mining companies, OEMs, OTMs, research organizations and consultants from around the world who recognize that innovation does not happen in silos. GMG improves communication and facilitates collaboration to foster a more sustainable and efficient future for mining. Through multi-stakeholder working groups, we are systematically removing the impediments to create the safe and sustainable mines of the future.
