The Mining Sector collaborates with Vodacom Business to help tackle industry challenges

Johannesburg – The South African Mining Industry has in recent times been experiencing serious safety challenges. Vodacom today announced its intention to join forces with the Mining Precinct@Carlow Road and Mining Sector in general to make use of its technology in order to help solve some of the critical challenges identified by the Mining Sector.

Speaking at the Vodacom Mining Engagement event held at the Hilton Hotel in Sandton on Thursday, Nkululeko Magadla, Managing Executive for Vodacom Business Large Enterprise Segment said: “As a leader in the Information and Communication Technology (ICT) Vodacom intends to partner and collaborate with the Mining Sector in finding possible solutions that can best help respond to some of the challenges faced by the Mining Sector.”

“Vodacom has capability beyond fixed and mobile services that could be applied in the Mining Sector in order to help address some of the challenges affecting the mining sector across the country,” says Magadla.

Explaining on how Vodacom Business intends to partner with the Mining Sector, Magadla said that some of the capabilities include Internet of Things (IoT) platform for aggregation and analytics, digital Health capability to help support health screening at the edge and Big Data as a Service.

“Vodacom has strong generic IoT capabilities and would like to work with the mining sector in order to define industry specific solutions that can help address specific problems amongst these health and safety, mining efficiency and productivity. In order for us to be able to provide suitable solutions, we will collaborate with the Mining Precinct in several areas to research solutions across a range of technology interventions, said Magadla.

The Mining Precinct@Carlow Road, programme manager for Real-time Information Systems (RTIMS), IIoT, and Digitalisation, Jean-Jacques says: “With the valuable support and guidance of many of our Collaborators, such as the Chamber of Mines, the DST, the DTI, MEMSA, the CSIR, and our major SA Mining Houses, we will be able to complete our industrial and applied research work for RTIMS in its 1st year of execution (March 2018).”

Jacques said: “We have made good progress in our efforts of identifying viable, and coherent components for a Mining IIoT Framework, which is holistic in its approach. Much work still lies ahead and key to the success of solving SA’s mining challenges within an ever-evolving Digitalisation and Industry 4.0 environment, will require active and sincere collaboration among many Industry-reliant participants.

Jacques adds “that it is a collaboration of the willing and so is pleased that Vodacom is willing to engage and be involved this collaboration with the Mining Precinct@Carlow Road. We look forward to continued interactions in this regard”. Digitalisation and real-time information systems will undeniably change the Health and Safety dynamics in mining, and the many challenges. 

“One fatality or one injury is one too many, and so aspirations are high that as we progress from modernised mines to digitalised mines, to eventually intelligent mines, every stakeholder needs to re-think positioning, products, solutions, and participation, to jointly deliver on this aspiration for South Africa’s mines”.