More Resources
Mining’s Digital Imperative
Sandvik Case Study
Industrial Automation Solution for Mining
Forrester Wave Leader
IIoT for the Future of Mining
Contact iotgds@cisco.com to find out more
Original Blog Written by Roland Plett
Digitization strategies offer mining companies the opportunity to navigate the cyclical boom and bust of the industry more effectively. With clear views of operational realities and increased agility, businesses can make timely adjustments.
Key use cases gaining momentum include autonomous vehicle movement, secure mobile worker solutions, and the path toward full remote operations. These strategies enable more precise production optimization, reduced maintenance costs, enhanced safety monitoring, and access to real-time data for decision making.
The digital solution involves leveraging industrial-grade sensors, standardizing and securing data, efficient data streaming, and value-driven data utilization through dashboards and analytics engines. Embracing digital strategies paves the way for safer, more productive, and responsive mining operations in the face of future challenges.
The Cisco® Industrial Automation Solution for mining provides guidance for digitizing industrial mining environments in order to achieve significantly improved business operational outcomes. It provides network and security design and implementation guidance for mining industrial applications supporting extraction, crushing, conveyance, processing, smelting, and refining processes. The solution supports resilient, secure connectivity to Industrial Automation and Control Systems (IACS) and key mining assets that are the core of mining process environments, providing a complete, secure, end-to-end networking and security solution.
• Improved Operational Equipment Effectiveness (OEE) and asset utilization through increased production availability and asset visibility• Reduced risk to the mining environment through industry-leading cybersecurity• Increased extraction rates, improving product quality through early indication of quality-impacting events or conditions• Faster deployments and troubleshooting and easier management of equipment• Innovation (such as predictive maintenance) within productionenvironments ready for cloud-based and edge-intelligent IoT applications• Visibility into the mining operations production network and automation equipment
The Cisco Industrial Automation Solution – Mining is unique and distinguished in the marketplace, integrating industry-leading IT expertise with mining operations requirements and applications. Using this solution gives customers, partners, and system implementers the confidence to deploy Cisco’s networking and security technology in any mining industrial automation setting.
The partnership between Sandvik and Cisco is a match made in mining heaven, delivering productivity and safety improvements to underground mines globally.
The solutions that were implemented are flexible enough to adapt to local conditions, such as remote locations, and support both existing legacy devices and protocols, including Ethernet-based technologies.
With digitalization technology, combining solutions such as proximity detection with strong connectivity where people, equipment and different types of resources operate minimizes accidents. And in the worst-case scenario, if there is an emergency situation, being able to send messages to everyone or coordinate a rescue requires a network that can be easily connected to.
Original Blog Written by Bruce Frederick
As miners retire, mining operators are finding it difficult to replace them. One reason for the personnel shortage can be attributed to the fact that mining places people and heavy mining equipment in the same place, and that is a formula for accidents. The good news is that today’s ultra-reliable wireless networks make it practical to operate autonomous and tele-remote vehicles, improving safety, job appeal, and overall equipment efficiency (OEE).
Here are three reasons to move toward autonomous and tele-remote mining—and how Cisco Ultra-Reliable Wireless Backhaul makes them practical.
Picture a surface mining vehicle that’s several stories high and carrying 400 tons of ore. An operator who doesn’t see a smaller vehicle might not even notice the collision. With tele-remote vehicles, operators can work safely from a temperature-controlled office in an operations center anywhere in the world. A collision or an earth fault inside a high wall might still destroy a vehicle, but the operator won’t be harmed.
Potential employees are worried about their safety, and many don’t want to work in extreme remote locations with little to do outside of work. Many fly-in fly-out camps have nothing but housing and food service. With tele-remote vehicles and an ultra-reliable wireless network, you can recruit drivers to work in operations centers located in or near cities. Another benefit: you don’t have to pay to fly miners to the pit for their four-week shift.
In traditional mining operations, drivers take a bus to the site, another bus to the pit, and then stand in a ready line to start their shift. That can take several hours—while equipment sits idle. Tele-remote and autonomous vehicles reduce or eliminate idle time, increasing OEE.
Automated mining has become mainstream due to recent advancements, including improved vehicle sensors, smarter AI algorithms, and Cisco Ultra-Reliable Wireless Backhaul. Our technology provides fiber-like performance, ensuring seamless connectivity for assets on the move with 99.999% reliability, up to 500Mbps dedicated bandwidth, low latency, security, and no packet loss during access point handoffs, surpassing traditional wireless networks.
Original Blog Written by Ruben Lobo
Leading research firm, Forrester, recognized Cisco Industrial Threat Defense as a Leader in its analysis of ICS (Industrial Control Systems) security solutions.
Cisco, known for its expertise in enterprise cybersecurity and networking, has been supporting industrial organizations in digitizing their operations for over 15 years.
Industrial Threat Defense stands out as a comprehensive, pre-integrated industrial cybersecurity solution, offering visibility into industrial assets, macro-segmentation and micro-segmentation to isolate and protect networks, endpoint detection and response (EDR), secure remote access, threat intelligence and incident response services, and extended detection and response (XDR) for threat investigation and remediation.
Industrial Threat Defense is unique in its ability to seamlessly integrate all these components, simplifying the security infrastructure for organizations that often have numerous cybersecurity tools in place.
Cisco embraces an open ecosystem, allowing organizations to incorporate existing solutions from other vendors into the Industrial Threat Defense framework. Cisco's commitment to industrial digitization and deep understanding of operational technology requirements position them as a trusted partner in securing industrial operations.
