Tag Archives: Palantir Technologies

Rio Tinto to extend use of Palantir Technologies’ AI-based solutions

Palantir Technologies Inc has renewed its multi-year enterprise agreement with Rio Tinto, extending the pair’s pact for an additional four years and securing Rio Tinto’s ongoing access to the Palantir Artificial intelligence Platform (AIP).

As an early adopter of Palantir Foundry (Foundry), Rio Tinto has already primed its operational landscape for the deployment of AI through the creation of a robust digital twin (or Ontology), Palantir says. Via the Ontology, AIP will enable Rio Tinto to build, test, and validate AI use cases at an accelerated pace and deploy them to production safely.

These AI use cases will follow and augment critical operational workflows Rio Tinto conducts in Foundry today. From managing plant operations to monitoring geotechnical risk to coordinating dozens of unmanned trains carrying iron ore, Foundry is enabling Rio Tinto to make well-informed decisions and take appropriate actions based on a single, unified source of truth, it added.

Bold Bataar, Rio Tinto’s Chief Commercial Officer, said: “Foundry has helped to transform the parts of our business where it has been applied. In our most high-stakes environments, we are empowering our people to find better ways of working, to improve how we operate our assets, increase performance and to innovate. The Foundry Ontology has made our structured data accessible, and AIP is doing the same for our unstructured data while enabling us to attack with pace problems previously deemed too complex.”

For network specialists and train controllers in the RTIO Operations Centre, in Western Australia, Foundry provides a view of rail operations, assembled from real-time data from hundreds of equipment units and systems in the value chain. With the Ontology providing a unified view of all assets, network specialists coordinate the haulage of iron ore by 53 driverless trains, each with 240 wagons, across the Pilbara rail network. They can optimise, collaborate on and execute complex routing decisions to balance production targets and maintenance needs. As a result, both railway throughput and safety have been improved.

In Mongolia, Foundry equips Rio Tinto with a dynamic understanding of geotechnical risk at Oyu Tolgoi, one of the world’s deepest and largest block cave mines. The mine’s challenging conditions require advanced risk management and constant surveillance to ensure safe production. The Ontology Rio Tinto has configured in Foundry integrates data from thousands of sensors across the mine and serves as a single source of information for cave health, instrumentation and risk, according to the company. This represents a new paradigm for block cave mining and has enabled various adjacent workflow innovations which will be further expanded through Palantir AIP.

Ted Mabrey, Palantir’s Head of Commercial, said: “We have high expectations for Rio Tinto’s utilisation of Palantir’s AIP based on what they have already achieved with Foundry and their ambition for secure use of AI. The Ontology created by Rio Tinto’s team in Foundry over the past three years enables fast deployment of AI solutions to some of Rio Tinto’s most pressing challenges and ensures best and safe operator practice in areas like risk identification, asset management, and supply chain order and fulfilment processes.”

WesTrac to deploy Palantir Technologies’ Foundry across Component Rebuild Centres, Inventory Management teams

Palantir Technologies and WesTrac, one of the world’s largest Caterpillar dealers and leading provider of heavy mobile equipment and aftermarket services to the Australian mining and construction sectors, have announced a multi-year enterprise expansion of their partnership, which first began in 2021, to deploy Foundry across core operations.

The expanded partnership will initially focus on deploying Foundry across WesTrac’s Component Rebuild Centres and to Inventory Management teams, to drive greater overall efficiency and customer delivery for WesTrac, Palantir says.

Palantir’s Foundry operating system is being used to help increase throughput of WesTrac’s Component Rebuild Centre at its headquarters in Perth, Western Australia, and is being expanded to the Company’s Tomago facility, in New South Wales. Foundry is used daily by workshop planners and supervisors to improve task scheduling decisions, manage upcoming part constraints, and increase labour efficiency through proactive alerting on task performance and schedule adherence. Foundry will also be leveraged by WesTrac’s Inventory Management teams to identify deficits in available inventory that may block workshop progress, enabling the team to make more proactive ordering decisions, Palantir says.

Jarvas Croome, CEO at WesTrac, said: “In the current technology-rich era, WesTrac has a strong focus on incorporating enhanced data-driven decisions across our business as we look to drive our own digital transformation and improve delivery of Cat® products in Australia. Implementing Foundry has delivered a strong initial return on investment, and we anticipate the five-year expansion of our partnership with Palantir will enhance return on investment and enable more data-driven decisions. The Foundry platform has been a leading feature within WesTrac, with rapid uptake, high usability and widespread acceptance by users across the business.

“As we expand the scope of Foundry, including to new applications like artificial intelligence (AI) solutions, we expect uptake of Palantir’s products to increase. WesTrac is committed to providing world-class products and services to our customers by ensuring operations are supported by the latest technology, which is why we are pleased be extending our partnership with Palantir.”

Ashwin Rajan, Head of Commercial for Australia at Palantir, said Foundry is now serving as the digital twin for WesTrac’s core operations, delivering tangible business benefits.

“The suite of software in Foundry help front-line Component Rebuild Centre & Inventory Teams improve overall efficiency and customer delivery,” he said. “For example, in just the last six months, Foundry has identified a significant number of constrained parts blocking work order progress – and suggested remediation strategies to ensure continued operations. WesTrac predicts these outcomes alongside improvements in inventory management will drive overall throughput up by at least 5% over the next five years, with additional benefits expected in other areas such as reduced working capital requirements and improved time to invoice.”

In addition to Foundry, WesTrac plans to explore AI solutions leveraging a suite of software including Palantir’s new Artificial Intelligence Platform (AIP). AIP, Palantir says, can allow WesTrac to better connect sales to operations, by enabling sales functions to ask questions of workshop operations, to inform sales strategy and improve the accuracy of information provided to customers.