Article: Collaboration is Key for Mining Operations

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Global Mining Review Features Orion on Five Ways to Transform the Frontline Mining Workforce

The global mining industry is thriving. Demand for valuable minerals continues to rise. New technologies in exploration and planning continue to create enormous new opportunities. And the rise of the connected mine is helping global mining companies like ABB prevent equipment downtime, enhance productivity, and keep workers safer.

Ideas like the connected mine showcase how digital transformation will be critical to driving profit, productivity, and safety in the coming years. Notably, McKinsey & Company estimates digitalization could save mining companies $373 billion by 2025.

Mines are ripe with opportunities for digital transformation: automated drilling and heavy equipment, big data, interconnected sensors and drones, remote operation management, 3D printing, and more. Mining companies can amplify the transformative impact of these innovations by adding new technology to keep their workforce productive and safe.

Global Mining Review - Collaboration is Key - Collaboration Software for Mining - Orion

Read the Global Mining Review Article by Orion

Orion’s Sean Timmins shared his insights with Global Mining Review. As Timmins explains,

“Embracing digital transformation and new digital technology provides a long-term path to building resilient businesses focused on improved workforce productivity and safety.”

Innovation plans often overlook a crucial touchpoint: the frontline mining workforce. These teams are often underserved with technology and need collaboration solutions designed with their daily realities in mind.

“Mining enterprises seeking to benefit from digital transformation need to equip their frontline workforce with modern communication technologies designed for these environments. Geologists, surveyors, truck operators, machine operators, mechanics, electricians, technicians, blast crew members, supervisors, and more, all of these frontline mine workers need the ability to communicate and connect to others off and on-site.”

5 Ways Collaboration Technology Transforms Mining Operations

Mining operators that equip their deskless teams with the right collaboration technology can build on its voice-first communication foundation in innovative ways that improve productivity and safety across the frontline mining workforce.

  1. Operational command and control: Mine sites are increasingly remote, managed from global operations centers overseeing a distributed workforce from hundreds of miles away. Mining leaders need centralized visibility that connects a distributed workforce and operations to their organization in real time.
  2. Increased productivity with process automation: Teams in dangerous work areas must remain heads up and focused on the task at hand. Voice-first collaboration technology enables team members to focus on higher-value tasks and increase productivity by voice-automating routine tasks like SOPs, checklists, and vehicle maintenance requests.Teams automate complex workflows, geofenced workflow triggers, and real-time native language translation.
  3. Increased safety in urgent situations: Rapid response and real-time information in urgent situations are mission-critical for the mining industry and key to improving miner safety. Modern collaboration technology helps workers in dynamic situations by providing instant and accurate intelligence with always-on automated panic alarms, man-down alerts, and lone worker safety protocols, which can be automatically or manually triggered by voice commands, events, geofences, or actions.
  4. Empowering workers with information: Finding a skilled workforce will remain a challenge for the mining industry, requiring companies to innovate and adapt. Collaboration tools bridge this talent gap by connecting team members with back-end systems, safety protocol guides, SMEs, and resources for quick information retrieval. This ultimately reduces training time and ensures all workers have access to critical information from their frontline point of work on their first day on the job.
  5. Seamless operations in edge and challenging environments: Connectivity for push-to-talk (PTT) on smart devices, applications, and browsers will always pose unique challenges for mining organizations operating in remote locations. SaaS-based collaboration solutions enable operations to use 3G, 5G, LTE, Private LTE, Wired Backhaul, Satellite Dish, BGAN, and WiFi. This creates highly reliable communications for remote teams.

Download the Article to Learn More About the 5 Benefits

The Orion Collaboration Platform for Mining Operations

Collaboration for Mining - Orion voice-first collaborationThe Orion Collaboration Platform for Mining transforms operational productivity, safety, and compliance with its voice-first technology that connects global mining teams with Push-to-Talk (PTT) voice, text, images, videos, and files at any distance.

Orion provides automated safety alerts and voice-driven checklists that help mining teams strengthen their safety culture and operate more effectively. The platform enables automated compliance procedures, geofenced-triggered notifications, faster emergency response, and more.

Ultimately, global mining enterprises use Orion to gain new ways to drive profit with a safer, more productive workforce.

Learn How Orion Transforms Mining Operations

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