Tag Archives: Azure

Newcrest and Microsoft partner on digital twin and sustainability modelling projects

Automation, Base metals, IoT, Mining services, Mining software, Precious metals, , , , , , , ,

Microsoft has announced a strategic partnership with Newcrest, which will see the mining company adopt Azure as its preferred cloud provider on a global basis, as well as work on digital twins and a sustainability data model.

The two companies are collaborating on programs of work including the use of digital twins to improve operational performance and a high-impact sustainability data model, Microsoft said.

As an industry-leading user of Microsoft technology, Newcrest has migrated all key workloads, including SAP, from private cloud to Azure. Microsoft 365 is deployed across the organisation, as is Teams and Power BI.

Two priority projects are underway, with the first being the creation of a full value chain digital twin at Newcrest’s Cadia operation in New South Wales, which captures operational data spanning the full breadth of the site. Developed in collaboration with Microsoft, Willow and site operational experts, the digital twin displays data from both information technology and operational technology through easy-to-digest 3D visualisations of the mining process, Microsoft explained. This allows operators and managers to make tactical and strategic decisions in real time to improve performance.

A scenario planning tool will eventually be integrated into the digital twin to enable testing of simulated actions against live data before making operational changes in the field. Together with data on other critical operational metrics, such as recovery and costs, this solution will evolve into a full productivity model for each mining site, according to Microsoft.

Microsoft and Versor are also working with Newcrest on a sustainability data model, with the first release due by June 2022. The model is designed to improve sustainability and streamline environmental, social and governance (ESG) reporting. It will also reduce the time it takes to produce annual sustainability reports. Newcrest will eventually integrate a 3D visualisation tool into the data model to better view end-to-end sustainability performance across the value chain.

Gavin Wood, Chief Information Officer at Newcrest, said these platforms create a scaffold for new digital solutions that will provide predictive and prescriptive insights to help the company optimise operations.

“When you think about how big and complex a mine site is, particularly in regard to the processing done on site, how much energy and water it consumes, the ability to use the full power of AI to provide actionable insights across the value chain is going to unlock so much value for us,” Wood said.

“This is key to our broader ambition to use technology as an opportunity to build on our successes in safety, sustainability and efficient mining.”

He added that having Microsoft as a strategic partner delivered an important advantage for Newcrest.

“I’m a big believer that when it comes to technology – and I’m talking about all technology, not just the IT world – complexity is the thing that kills you,” Wood said.

“It’s better to have simpler architectures and technology portfolios with fewer partners, where you have deeper partnerships and you work closely together, and benefit from the integration that comes with this approach.”

Newcrest’s strategic partnership with Microsoft has been forged with that in mind, Microsoft said.

Microsoft’s global cloud, Azure, now supports the company’s operations around the world. Newcrest is also exploring how it can use Microsoft’s Cloud for Sustainability, which is designed to record, report and reduce carbon emissions through actionable insights.

Brett Shoemaker, Director of Sustainability, Microsoft ANZ, said: “We are proud to work with Newcrest to harness the power of technology to build a more sustainable future, reducing greenhouse gas emissions, conserving energy and water, and driving change.

“You can’t manage what you can’t measure, so data and AI are keys to success. If we can get insights to the right people at the right time, and use data and AI to automate responses where it makes sense, we can impact environmental sustainability. That’s at the heart of Microsoft Cloud for Sustainability.”

Working with Microsoft and Versor, and leveraging Azure and Power BI, Newcrest has already developed data models that are being used across production, safety, cost and people processes, and which will inform the sustainability data project.

Orica continues to expand digital capabilities with help of Microsoft Azure

Comminution of minerals, Explosives and blasting, IoT, Mineral processing, Mining services, Mining software, , , , , ,

Leading blasting company Orica says it is rapidly expanding its digital capability, creating data rich and AI-infused tools that enable step-change improvements in customers’ productivity, safety and sustainability.

Over the last four years, Orica has grown its digital team fivefold, and from a standing start it now has more than 200 customers for its digital solutions – building a whole new offering and revenue stream for the company, it said.

It has now enlisted the help of Microsoft’s Azure platform as the strategic cloud foundation for its emerging digital portfolio. Azure’s performance, reliability, scalability and security provide trusted foundations for innovation while access to Azure IoT, a growing portfolio of Azure cognitive services and an extensive library of AI tools helps accelerate Orica’s digital innovation, according to Rajkumar Mathiravedu, Vice President of Digital Solutions for Orica.

Mathiravedu is also keen on the industry cross-pollination opportunities that the Azure ecosystem affords. He noted: “We are seeing Azure being deployed in lot of oil and gas applications and some of those can easily be applied in mining.”

Meanwhile he’s keeping a close eye on how emerging Azure capabilities, such as Azure Space which allows satellite information to be made easily accessible, could further expand Orica’s innovation horizons.

The company is already working on open digital platforms that integrate Orica expertise, customers’ own data with machine learning to create intelligent production workflows that, in real time, reveal to mining engineers what they are working with at a particular site and provide live design recommendations.

“Whether it is hard, medium, soft, and how the rock changes and where the most valuable ore is located,” Mathiravedu said. “So what it really means is now you can actually optimise the right explosives energy specific to the desired outcomes.

“This has a huge impact from a sustainability perspective. By using the right energy to break the rocks, we’re optimising the chemical energy. We are materially reducing the water and electricity, which is used for grinding and processing later, while readily managing environmental factors such dust and vibrations.”

This solution is now in production with an iron ore miner based in Australia, he added.

Orica’s cloud based digital platforms are designed to allow information to be shared openly across mining ecosystems – from geological exploration, through blasting, extraction and processing – integrating sensor and IoT data with AI-infused analytics to provide mining customers with the insights which will allow them to go “deeper, steeper and cheaper”, Mathiravedu said.

Leveraging the cloud, IoT, edge-processing and machine learning algorithms, Orica focuses on delivering real-time data-driven insights to help customers optimise energy use, drill patterns and maximise efficiencies both on the mine site and throughout the downstream value chain.

Srikant Kadambi, Energy Lead, Microsoft Asia, said: “Orica has unparalleled domain expertise and global industry knowledge. Combining that with Microsoft Azure capabilities and the ability of our teams and ecosystems to deploy these technologies at production scale allows us to work together to create literally ground-breaking – pun intended – solutions for the whole mining value chain. We bring to the table our whole Azure ecosystem, access to libraries of AI tools developed for different industries, and skills and expertise that we can share with Orica as it continues to grow its digital capability.”

To reinforce this digital focus, Orica has opened a Digital Immersion Centre in Brisbane – a specialised facility where it can, the company says, work with development partners, including Microsoft, and customers to promote innovation, spur collaboration and also establish an Orica data and analytics centre of excellence.

This centre of excellence brings together data science, artificial intelligence, modern cloud computing and Orica’s 140 plus years of domain expertise. It will also act as an incubator for any Orica digital businesses.

Mathiravedu said the digital team is building solutions to support existing Orica customers, as well as new customers from right across the sector’s value chain. Open by design, these platforms are tailored for a range of applications focused around efficiency, productivity and safety as well as to help support customers achieve their own sustainability targets.

“We do not want to be constrained only to existing Orica customers,” he said. “We want to be available to the entire mining value chain.”

Komatsu looks for productivity Edge with Microsoft partnership

Automation, IoT, Mining equipment, Mining services, Mining software, , , , , , ,

Komatsu, in order to continue its production momentum in the face of continued market uncertainty, is boosting its manufacturing capabilities and productivity through the use of Microsoft cloud, Internet of Things (IoT) and artificial intelligence (AI).

The company, one of the world’s top makers of excavators, bulldozers, and other heavy equipment, needed help gathering and handling data to boost its own manufacturing capabilities and productivity, turning to the Azure cloud and specialists at Microsoft.

Microsoft said: “Komatsu is an innovative manufacturing enterprise that competes in an increasingly unpredictable international marketplace. Ever-shifting economic and other forces – like booms and busts in resource markets – are constantly pushing demand for its equipment up and down from country to country.

“Maintaining production momentum in the face of this sort of uncertainty can be a big challenge for factory managers.”

Nobuyoshi Yamanaka, General Manager for Komatsu’s Manufacturing Engineering Development Center (pictured above) Production Division, said: “Keeping pace with these fluctuations is our primary issue. The best way to do that is by raising our productivity. And, to do that … we need data.”

With the right data and the right insights, decision makers can visualise situations. From there they can opt to speed up or slow down production runs, manage supply chains, and accommodate factory downtime for retooling and maintenance, Microsoft said.

They can also optimise the use of personnel – a key factor in Japan’s sophisticated manufacturing sector, which is grappling with a shortage of skilled workers as the nation’s demographics age.

Acknowledging that it had a need for data, Komatsu went about seeking advice on what technology and data solutions would be best for its ambitious productivity quest, Microsoft said. “They searched widely and settled on Microsoft.”

Adopting a cloud solution

“Microsoft asked us what we wanted to do and how we wanted to expand the solution in the future, then it gave us exactly the right support,” said Yamanaka whose team is now studying how AI and Intelligent Edge solutions might further boost efficiencies.

The company first set out to collect production data in 2009 by using on-premises servers. Five years later, it went further and launched “KOM-MICS” – an IoT system that collects data from sensors installed on a myriad of machine tools and welding robots.

“Komatsu uses a high-mix/low-volume manufacturing system. Plant equipment is not always operating at full capacity as machines may be down for many hours due to setup changes, and so on,” Yamanaka says. “Visualising this situation and reducing machine downtime increases manufacturing output without extra equipment or personnel. Our ultimate goal is to double productivity while reducing equipment and personnel.”

KOM-MICS was a success. And, soon so much information was coming in that Komatsu realised its on-premises approach to data needed a rethink, Microsoft said. It also wanted to collect and visualise data from a network of outside partners and other factories, both in Japan and abroad, that contribute around 80% of its overall production work.

In 2016, it began looking around for a cloud solution.

A Komatsu worker checks a KOM-MICS screen

Keisuke Tsuboi, from Komatsu’s Numerical Controller Team, Advanced Technology Promotion Office, said: “We needed to roll out KOM-MICS to our partners and overseas manufacturing bases to increase the overall productivity of Komatsu.

“Because KOM-MICS collects 20-30 GB of data from each machine tool per year, adding the required resources to the on-premise system, and increasing the number of connected machine tools, would have been difficult. So, we decided the cloud could overcome these problems.”

Weighing up the options

Komatsu moved its data onto Azure in early 2017. According to Tsuboi, a primary reason behind the choice was trust: Azure has extensive security measures backed by Microsoft’s expertise. It also made Komatsu’s data capabilities immediately compliant with GDPR – the European Union’s new data protection measure.

The flexibility and scalability of Azure were also deciding factors that has allowed KOM-MICS coverage to be ramped up almost seamlessly, Microsoft said.

“We are connecting 100 to 200 extra machines to KOM-MICS per year,” Tsuboi says. “We have around 700 connected machine tools and 350 connected welding robots. Komatsu has around 1,200 machine tools and 700 welding robots that can be connected to KOM-MICS. This scale of data is no problem for our system on Azure.”

Expanding its scope

Komatsu connected its Thai and Indonesian bases to KOM-MICS in 2017. Since then, the number of Komatsu’s partners connected to KOM-MICS has been increasing rapidly.

“The transition to Azure instantly expanded the potential scope of the KOM-MICS rollout. The meticulous support of Microsoft enabled us to complete the migration in a short time,” Yamanaka said.

More data from more machines in more places means the company can improve quality measures, plan and adjust with agility, and better anticipate equipment failure, according to Microsoft.

“Before we started collecting data, we didn’t know to what extent our machines were working within a 24-hour period,” says Tsuboi. “With KOM-MICS, data is visualised so we can work on improving production efficiency by increasing areas with low production conditions to be equal to those that are high.

“By analysing the machine data from a certain production line we have been able to increase the machine operation rate by about 25%.”

AI and the Intelligent Edge

Looking ahead, Yamanaka believes AI on the Intelligent Edge can potentially deliver more productivity dividends, such as freeing up the time of skilled workers and opening the door to predictive maintenance.

“I believe that data can be used in a variety of ways,” he says. “We would like to automatically realise optimal machining conditions and have AI do some tasks that are currently handled by skilled workers.

“Also, there is quality. We would like features that can automatically detect signs of failures before they happen. We need to make use of AI. But because processing data in the cloud takes time, we are thinking about adopting Azure IoT Edge so we can run Microsoft Azure services on IoT devices.”