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Mining Industry… to the cloud!

Inkey, December 29, 2022 636 Views

Mining is one of the most essential and possibly one of the oldest industries in the world. In ancient times, people started mining metals to make tools. With the discovery of coal, coal mining started followed by the discovery and mining of oil. Almost everything that we get which forms the very basic foundation stone of civilization comes from mines. This makes mining one of the most important industries of all time. Considering the kind of infrastructure that the industry deals with one would assume that digitizing the industry would be slow and costly. This would not be an incorrect assumption. But that does not mean the industry is not digitized. It is and in a fairly efficient way in most cases. But cloud adaptation in the industry is lagging. The industry would be helped immensely if it adapts IoT devices and augmented reality, but these require a cloud-first approach.

The way forward

The mining industry is best suited to use IoT devices and augmented reality services. If one of their remote mining platforms breaks down, without IoT and augmented reality, they will have to check the equipment first manually. If they require the services of an expert, they will have to raise the request, going through appropriate channels. Once the expert is ready, he or she will have to be transported to the remote location where he or she will check the device and fix it. All of this can take days and the operation would be paused during this entire time. However, with IoT devices, the fault can be recognized in real time. Based on the data obtained from the damage, a request could be raised in real time which would go through the required channels and the appropriate expert can be contacted. All of this could be automated, which would reduce the time from a few days to a few minutes.

Add augmented reality to the mix and the overall time could be reduced greatly. With a device like HoloLens, the expert can get in touch with the on-site user and guide them in repairing the fault in real time from their own offices, without having to physically be there. Not only would this reduce the overall time, but it would also save money that would go into transporting the expert to the site and back.

Let’s also not forget that the people in charge can also see the reports whenever they want and from wherever they want.

Like Microsoft Dynamics 365 OR Microsoft Power Platform can form the basis enabling all these services to exchange data. Microsoft Power BI could then be used for reports and visuals which could give both a microscopic and macroscopic view of all the operations of the entire organization.

And so

Moving to cloud would not only reduce the hardware cost but also enable the use of IoT devices and augmented reality services. This would save time and money and improve overall efficiency.

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