Your application choices should be driven by your business needs. Not the other way around. 

Selection of the right applications for your mobile fleet ensures you access the data that matters most to your business, not just leverage what's available. The potential gains are big: improved productivity, improved asset health, and overall higher ROI. 

Network constraints are always a concern when bringing on a new application. Deploying your network as your 4th Utility allows you to scale the network as needed, in support of any new applications you bring in, rather than bringing in a new network to support each new application. 3D-P pioneered the idea of open broadband networks in mining over 20 years ago, helping our customers move their technologies from individual vendor supplied networks to a single 4th Utility that provided connectivity for all their applications! Today, our 4th Utility solutions provide scalable networks designed to support whatever applications the site may require. 

Proper selection of the right applications for your mine not only ensures access to the appropriate data now, but provides the flexibility to add more data as your business requirements evolve. Most applications also come with their own hardware. Multiple applications can quickly take over most of the real estate in the cab of your heavy equipment. Equipment downtime quickly becomes an issue as more hardware is installed on-board. 

With the objective of simplifying and improving the access miners have to their data, 3D-P has partnered with several applications vendors who utilize the onboard compute and store and forward capabilities within the IEP. 3D-P hosts those partners applications onboard the IEP, removing the need to add additional onboard computers, GPS receivers, power supplies, etc. when deploying these applications. One example is Honeywell's APM (Asset Performance Monitor) platform. With 3D-P hosting APM's datalogger software onboard the IEP, what was a radio becomes an onboard datalogger that provides access to all the onboard sensor data, adds GPS Position, time, and acceleration to the datapoints, and transfers that data to the data concentrator in the office. 

From there, the customer chooses how they want to analyze their collected data: using Honeywell's APM analytics package, using their own in-house built analytics, or leveraging off-site third party big data analytics systems. 

The partnership with 3D-P and full utilization of the edge computing capability of the IEP removes technology clutter from the cab and significantly reduces the number of onboard devices that require downtime for installation and maintenance. 

The result: best-of-breed applications, lower CAPEX through application integration and reduced dowtime through less hardware used.