No more working in data silos in underground mines: Sudbury software designer creates digital solution centralizing all of a mine's functions into one system.

• Author: Romaniuk, Colleen

Jennifer Sloat, founder and CEO of MinelQ, believes that digital transformation is about simplicity.

Armed with a technical background and a desire to work on her own terms, Sloat founded her software company in Sudbury in 2013.

She wanted to create a data aggregator to solve a lot of the problems she was seeing in the mining industry.

"We need minerals and we need metals," she said. "Mining is important, but it's so inefficient. What are we doing? Is there another way to mine better and faster?"

At its core, MinelQ is a software suite. It can pull data from all available sensors and technologies available in a mine. The data is culled, stored, and finally presented in a way that's useful. It was designed with the intention of making siloed systems work together.

MineIQ is completely centralized. It offers asset management, fleet management, dispatch, location services, material tracking, inventory management, and more. It works with any infrastructure and can process any available data or diagnostics.

The software simplifies existing systems and processes in underground mines.

"We are creating landscapes of data," said Sloat. "Ours is a tool for digital transformation."

As an example, Sloat described ventilation systems. In any underground mine, ventilation is closely monitored, but unfortunately, many of the systems in place do not communicate with each other.

There are systems to detect air quality, and then separate systems to notify workers if there is a change or emergency.

Sloat hopes to make these processes centralized and instantaneous.

"If there's a problem with the air, our software detects it. Then, in the future, when digital transformation is complete, everyone will be immediately notified of a change. Workers will be able to say: oh, I need to get to the refuge station because there is an air issue. It happens right away."

While there are many different companies working on similar data aggregators, MinelQ is unique for a few reasons.

Sloat created the software to be a white label product. A company can purchase the MineIQ suite and put their own brand on it, display what they need to display for their clients, and then resell it.

There is no reason that companies have to create their own software, according to Sloat. MinelQ works with what you already have.

MineIQ is sold on a subscription basis. For one yearly payment, her clients get the software licence and continuous customer support.

Sloat and her team are responsible...