Smart mines usher in new opportunities for development, 4 reasons, 4 stages, 4 problems

The Proposal of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China on Formulating the 14th Five-Year Plan for National Economic and Social Development and the 2035th Five-Year Vision Targets proposes to promote the deep integration of industries such as the Internet, big data and artificial intelligence, promote the development of advanced manufacturing clusters, and build a number of strategic emerging industries with their own characteristics, complementary advantages and reasonable structure. We will foster new technologies, new products, new forms of business and new models. "Green, safe, harmonious, intelligent and efficient" has become the requirements of the era of sustainable development of the mining industry, and constantly accelerating the pace of digital transformation of the mining industry has become the only way, and intelligent mines have ushered in new development opportunities.

In the context of the accelerated application of new generation information technologies such as artificial intelligence and 5G, relying on scientific and technological innovation to promote high-quality development and strengthening intelligent construction has become a new trend in the current development of mining industry. Mining developed countries since the 1990s have started mining automation, intelligent research, such as Finland, Canada, Sweden and many other developed countries started earlier than our country, they have a lot of advanced technology, equipment and achievements, put forward a lot of new ideas, worth learning and learning from. At present, the global mining industry is experiencing a new revolution, and the combination of big data, artificial intelligence, Internet of Things and other technologies and mines is becoming increasingly close. It has become an important direction for the development of the mining industry to build smart mines with the "Internet + mining" model and develop in the direction of scale, intensification and synergy.

Nowadays, China is also paying more and more attention to intelligent mine construction, there are four main reasons:

First, international competition is becoming increasingly fierce, and innovation has become the development needs of The Times. Today's world is in a major change unseen in a century, the external environment of China's development is becoming increasingly complex, and international competition is becoming increasingly fierce. In order to achieve high-quality development, the mining industry must constantly increase technological innovation, adopt the latest applications and technologies, integrate digital and innovative concepts into reality, and effectively change the development mode.

Second, there is a shortage of talent in the mining industry. Nowadays, the difficulty of recruiting workers, especially high-end technical talents, has become increasingly prominent, which has also forced mining enterprises to continuously increase technological innovation efforts, and strive to develop less and less humanized.

Third, many mines in China have entered the stage of deep underground mining, the difficulty of mining has increased, the cost has risen, and we must constantly innovate technology in order to break the development bottleneck, improve production efficiency, and ensure safe production.

Fourth, the safety and environmental protection access threshold is getting higher and higher, and only by continuously improving the level of technological innovation can we meet the market access requirements and related environmental protection requirements. In this case, how to deeply integrate 5G, artificial intelligence, big data, cloud computing, blockchain and other technologies with traditional mining to achieve green, safe, harmonious, intelligent and efficient development of mining is particularly important.

The construction of smart mines is not an overnight process, but a long-term, step-by-step process. The mine production mode has roughly experienced four stages:

The first is the original stage, that is, mineral mining activities are mainly carried out by hand and simple mining tools, without planning, low efficiency, and great waste of resources.

The second is the mechanization stage, that is, a large number of mechanical equipment is used for mineral production activities, the degree of mechanization is high, but there is still no planning, the production is extensive, and the waste of resources is serious;

Third, in the digital mining stage, automated production equipment is used for operation and production, and information system is used as a management tool to achieve digital integration and data sharing, but it still faces many problems such as system integration and information integration, and it still does not pay enough attention to sustainable development.

The fourth is the intelligent mine stage, through the application of intelligent information technology, so that the mine has the human-like thinking, reaction and action ability, to achieve the comprehensive information integration and response ability of things, things and people, and everyone, and actively perceive, analyze, and quickly make the correct processing of the mine system.

On the basis of the existing automation and information construction in mines, promote the application of cutting-edge technologies such as the Internet of Things, big data, artificial intelligence, 5G, edge computing and virtual reality in mining enterprises. The construction of a resource collection of digital management, intelligent production control for the "ore flow", the whole process of few people unmanned production, integrated intrinsic safety management, intelligent decision-making based on industrial big data in one of the essential safety, resource intensive, green and efficient intelligent mine is to promote the transformation and upgrading of enterprises, high-quality development. The need to comprehensively enhance the comprehensive competitiveness and sustainable development ability of enterprises.

At present, many mining companies have benefited from the development and application of innovative technologies and the strengthening of smart mines. McKinsey analysis shows that the application of AI in the mining industry will bring a cumulative 122% cash flow change for technological innovation "front-runners" and only 10% cash flow change for "followers". The "front-runner" will have an initial competitive advantage, bringing their cost curve down and giving them an edge over competitors, such as higher margins and market value. It can be said that the entire industry will deeply realize that digital technology will become an important cost reduction factor, which can bring the cost curve of the industry down and ultimately keep the price of mineral products at a lower level.

Although China's intelligent mine construction has made rapid development, there are still some problems that need to be solved urgently. The first is the relative lack of significant technological innovation in the mining industry. Globally, the mining industry lags behind other industries in terms of significant technological innovation. While production technology has been modernized, these changes have not fundamentally disrupted the mining industry. Compared with large-scale mines abroad, Chinese mines are more complicated. Therefore, China's mine intellectualization can not completely copy the foreign model, should be achieved through continuous technological innovation. At present, many mining enterprises play the advantages of algorithms such as artificial intelligence and machine learning through the integrated application of real-time data and historical data, and form a data-centric mine neural network center, which simulates and predicts ecological plans and corporate strategies, providing support for management decision-making. Second, there are data barriers. To strengthen the construction of modern mines, it is necessary to break the data barriers between each link of the life cycle of mining rights and each business center, build a platform that integrates data concentration, integration, sharing, analysis and mining, and make better use of data as assets to maintain and increase the value of assets. The third is the lack of professional and technical personnel. At present, China's intelligent, less humanized related technical talent gap reached millions, and has not yet established a talent training mechanism, so we must constantly strengthen the training of technical personnel at all levels, and constantly establish and improve the technical personnel team. Finally, it is necessary to adapt to local conditions and implement policies based on mine. There are many small and medium-sized mines in China, the degree of intensive development is low, and the level of technical management is wide. Different mines should adopt different strategies to build intelligent mines. Some mines with large production scale, good mining conditions and certain innovation ability should become the main force to promote mine intelligence, and should go ahead to form a demonstration effect. Most small and medium-sized mines should proceed from the actual situation and do not seek overall promotion, but should selectively transplant, integrate, develop and apply relevant achievements, gradually improve the level of mining technology, equipment and intelligence, and integrate the concept of sustainable development into mine development.

The construction of intelligent mine is the concrete embodiment of the integration of the two and the "Internet +" strategy in the mining industry, which has brought an unprecedented revolution to the global mining industry. Only by actively promoting the intelligent construction of mines, can the new mining concept of green, safe, harmonious, intelligent and efficient be implemented and promote the high-quality development of mining.