Supporting the performance of your mine with Network-as-a-Service
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Remote work and cost cutting can affect the performance of the wireless network you rely on for your operations. Allocated budget might be postponed, personnel count reduced, yet your operations need to perform more efficiently than ever.
Network-as-a-Service (NaaS) might help you address those challenges by ensuring you rely on a technology solution that provides you with access to all the data your mine needs to perform optimally without impacting your cash flow.
5 ways to perform a site visit remotely
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There is no doubt about it – it is difficult to be proactive in the management of your wireless network. Yet, it is more critical than ever to be efficient, especially with the ‘new normal’ world we are moving to
While site visits might currently not be possible for many, we will review here 5 ways that a site visit can be performed remotely.
So, discover, learn and don’t wait to talk to your technology partner.
Improve the performance of your wireless network while self isolating
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This might seem counterintuitive to many. But think about all the tasks that you have on your work to do list that you never have the chance to tackle. Could it be a firmware upgrade? Technology research? Testing of a new network monitoring tool that seems a lot more performant than the one you have at site? Well now might be your opportunity to do so!
And while the situation is unprecedented, it will undoubtedly result in new, more remote and safer ways of planning and operating. But for now, what can you do that can bring value to your organization?
Let me give you a few ideas.
The Cost of Supporting Your Network
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3D-P works with a diverse, wide variety of clients – large to small, quarries to mines to airports, located all over the world – and during my tenure it has been very interesting to note both the differences, and commonalities between the clients and the diverse solutions we employ.
For example, no matter the industry, we can always apply the 3D-P pillars of successful network design:
- Understand the environment – geographically, culturally, and technologically
- Design for the application – now, and for the future
- Bring the best solution forward – best for the customer, not for us
Those are the common pillars we can use to build a stable, high-performing network for any customer, regardless of their size, industry, or application. The conversation then becomes one that can be different for every customer:
How can they best, most cost-effectively support that network?
The challenges of maintaining your ‘Digital Mine’ connected
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Experience has shown time and time again that – despite the best of intentions – our customers’ wireless networks are often neglected after deployment. The combination of multiple teams relying on it for access to their critical data (dispatch, maintenance, high precision GPS, operator safety, etc.) and a lack of accountability as to whom is responsible for its performance and maintenance often results in a network with performance and reliability that degrades over time.
Compounding that, as applications are added in response to the needs of the mine’s teams, and as utilization of the network increases in response, performance degradation begins to happen at an exponential rate. Wireless networks become slow and unresponsive, time to resolve issues increases, and the value that the network adds begins to drop steeply as the cost (and pain) of maintaining it grows.
If this describes your experiences with your wireless network, the good news is that you’re not alone -and a proper understanding of your pain points will ensure you can now engage the support you need.
Let’s review some of the typical pain points we see in the field.
Leveraging hybrid LTE/InstaMesh to help smaller operators transition towards digitization
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As previously discussed, a hybrid LTE/InstaMesh client solution presents a number of benefits to mines considering LTE. Often the mines investigating LTE solutions are larger mines, or those considering moving to autonomous operations.
LTE does however present a number of benefits to small operations too, and can even be an avenue towards starting their digitization process, when combined with appropriate planning and technology partnership.
Productivity performance – It all starts with converging IT and OT
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In its 2017 report titled ‘Digital in Mining: Progress … and Opportunity’, Accenture reported that “56% [of mines were] considering merging their IT and OT groups within the next 12 months’. While significant progress has been achieved, the two groups are still learning to work together at most sites to address common issues around wireless network reliability, mobile data access and cybersecurity among others.
The distinct functions each group is accountable for has a lot to do with this difficult merge. It’s however critical to review the silver lining in converging IT and OT when it comes to the digital mine – enhanced productivity through real time data access provided by a reliable wireless network and reduced technology Capex.
Overcoming the challenges associated with your GPS corrections
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Since the first broadband wireless network deployments in mining, there has been a strong use case for sending GPS corrections over these networks. GPS corrections are relatively small packets that are transmitted once per second from the GPS base station and must be received, with as little latency as possible, and in sequence, by the High Precision GPS (HPGPS) Receivers onsite. These relatively small packets should theoretically have little impact on the network, and since coverage is typically available, it seems a good fit.
Reducing the risk management associated with deployment of your Digital Mine
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Increase of safety, productivity and decrease of overall machine downtime have been key drivers for digitalization in mining. This process has however a cost that may have limited or slowed down some miners in deploying technologies at their site, due to a challenge in calculating and predicting ROI.
The fact is that without a proper long term plan of your data requirements, your technology expenditure can be significantly higher than expected over the course of several years. An open computing platform can create a bridge for deployment of multiple technologies over a period of time, supporting migration to a Digital Mine cost effectively.
Supporting your Digital Mine
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The ongoing support of a digital mine is not something that should be ignored. A properly designed, deployed, and tuned wireless network requires a conscious effort. Keeping the network in a peak-operating state requires trained resources who understand the challenges of wireless networks within an ever changing environment.
Ongoing support can mean many things to different people. The most popular views are broken up into three categories: Collaborative approach; hands-off approach; in-sources approach.
