Vale's digital evolution takes shape: Sudbury nickel miner moving to world's largest underground wireless network.

• Author: Gillis, Len

Vale Canada Ltd. is charging forward to provide LTE communications in its Canadian underground mining operations. In some cases, this will be an all new level of wireless communication, while in other cases it will mean switching away from existing Wi-Fi.

Vale said this means the company will soon be operating the largest privately owned underground LTE network in the world. LTE, or long-term evolution, is a higher form of wireless communications that most people associate with their cellular phones. In the mines, LTE will support a host of wireless devices and live connections to people and mobile equipment.

Vale described their new LTE system as an enabler, something that will allow the company to carry out significant changes for integrated operations scheduling, autonomous and tele-remote mining machines and huge efficiencies and cost savings for underground mine ventilation systems.

MORE COMMUNICATION

"We have changed the way we work here at Vale," said Brad Atkins, manager of digital transformation for Vale's North Atlantic operations. "We have very high interaction with each other. We also do continuous improvements every two weeks. Historically, a project does a 'Lessons Learned' (briefing) at the end of the project and we comment on things we would never do again.

"We now do that every two weeks," he said. "One of the things that we found out was that for us as a team, the work was getting very well integrated, but our communications weren't."

He said the goal is to have more departments integrate their work, their schedules and their planning, all while taking advantage of the technology. Atkins said the plan for the company's digital transformation follows a detailed program consisting of eight elements: connectivity and tracking; smart plant infrastructure; a digital workforce; mine automation; integrated scheduling and planning; advanced analytics; HSE (health, safety, environment) risk reduction; and innovation.

Atkins said implementing the digital workforce would mean equipping miners with smartphones, tablets or a similar device to help them "make the right decisions at the right time." He said this would allow live communication between workers as well as between surface and underground.

"We need network access in our mines. We need to know where our people are to ensure they're safe during an emergency," said Atkins.

If there was an emergency underground, the LTE-based tracking system would let the company know that...