Issue link: http://resourceworld.uberflip.com/i/517266
50 www.resourceworld.com j u n e / j u l y 2 0 1 5 MININGWORLD S ince it was launched in 2008, Rio Tinto's Mine of the Future TM program has made some pretty impressive accomplishments. March 3, 2015 Rio Tinto [RIO-ASX, LSE, NYSE] announced the launching of its Analytics Excellence Centre. The company will begin mining "big data" at the centre towards enhancing equipment productivity and safety across its global operations. Rio Tinto group executive technology and innovation, Greg Lilleyman, said, "The Analytics Excellence Centre will allow us to extract maximum value from the data we are capturing around the per- formance of our equipment, making our operations more predictable, efficient and safer. This is a world-first for the min- ing industry and is all part of Rio Tinto's relentless pursuit of productivity gains across our businesses." Lilleyman added, "This is bringing the world of tomorrow to today. We're combining human experience with machine intelligence and providing more support to our operations." The centre is the latest phase of Rio Tinto's Mine of the Future™ program; just a few of the many significant mile- stones reached by the Mine of the Future program include: in 2008 automated train trials; in 2010 the Operations Centre was commissioned; in 2012 automated truck deployment; and in 2014 the deployment of the autonomous drilling system. Last summer Rio Tinto announced its autonomous fleet of trucks, the largest in the world, had reached a notable mile- stone. Its autonomous (self driving) haul trucks had moved 200 million tonnes of material in the Pilbara, Western Australia. Rio Tinto Chief Executive Iron Ore, China, Korea and Japan, Andrew Harding, said, "In 2012, ore was loaded autono- mously into a crusher at our Yandicoogina operations – making it the first autono- mous mine in Australia. We are proud to be at the forefront of developing and using ground breaking technology." The high-technology, purpose-built Operations Centre, commissioned in 2010, is the primary control centre for Rio Tinto's vast network of mines, rail systems, infra- structure facilities and port operations in the Pilbara. At the time of the centre's announced launch it employed 200 con- trollers and schedulers and more than 230 technical planning and support staff. Alan Davies, Chief Executive Diamonds & Minerals, speaking at the Melbourne Mining Club on February 5, 2015, said about technology, "A lot changes when you see those geographically distant opera- tions as sources of data – big, real-time and proprietary data. For example, in Brisbane, and in the clever country that invented froth flotation, we have what we call our Processing Excellence Centre. In that Centre, we bring together live data streams coming off the mill circuits and float tanks of the copper concentrators in Mongolia and in Utah. We can see and compare everything that's driving perfor- mance up or down. We can have sites on opposite sides of the earth learning from each other in real time." It seems the future is here. n one of Rio Tinto's Autonomous Trucks Rio Tinto's Mine of the Future program