Germany and UK-based software developer, Hivekit, has released what it says is a new vendor-agnostic operations management system for the mining and metals industry.

Hivekit is a cloud-based platform that tracks people, vehicles, machines and data sources, and visualises them in a three dimensional digital twin. It allows operators to assign tasks and commands and automates large parts of a mine’s operations, according to the company.

The company explained: “Most modern mines use a multitude of subcontractors, each with equipment from different vendors. This can make systems integration and coordination difficult and can result in lower overall operational efficiency. Hivekit has set out to tackle this challenge. Its operations management system, which is already in use across the urban mobility and agricultural industries, allows mine operators to take direct control of their site across vendors and data silos.”

Operators can gain a real-time view of every movement on their site and drill down into machine-specific data with customisable user interfaces (UIs), the company said. These make it easy to visualise eg the load, speed and route of haul trucks, show historic penetration rates for shaft sinking equipment, or see security clearances and current tasks for site staff.

Hivekit also comes with a mobile app that tracks workers and the vehicles they are in, receive tasks and communicate with site managers. Here, too, a custom interface builder makes it possible to create mobile UIs for metric display and location-specific data entry. This enables – for instance – environmental teams to collect pH values and conductivity metrics that can be exported and displayed as overlays in Hivekit’s digital twin. From there, operators can assign tasks and schedules which Hivekit automatically translates into individual commands and traceable assignments. It then allocates these, tracks their completion and provides a live overview of every activity.

The company concluded: “A unique feature of Hivekit is its ability to track entities and assign tasks and routes autonomously using easy-to-write rules. This makes tasks, such as checking access privileges when contractors enter a secure zone or triggering ventilation-on-demand in headings, quick and accurate, allowing human operators more time to focus on overall operational efficiency.”