Forewords

Value Mine crossborder event was organized online on 3 June through Teams. The event attracted over 130 participants from industry, SMEs, and other actors to hear and discuss the mining industry´s digital future.

Previously published news story focused on industry talks presented by LKAB, Boliden, Tapojärvi, ABB and Epiroc. This news story focuses on SME talks presented by Merius, Ditwin, Timegate Instruments, Optimation, Muon Solutions, and Widefind.

SME talks

Anna Klemets, Chief Reality Capture Officer, Merius

Merius provides mapping, design, and consulting services for industrial investments using 3D digitization, virtual and visualization technologies. Merius mission is to improve customers’ problem solving and decision-making processes by producing illustrative solutions for reality capture, design, and consulting. Merius head office is in Kokkola Finland.

Merius service offering covers gathering of information, forming a vision to understandable visualizations, and ended up an efficient sharing. Main services include Reality capture - Real reality: laser scanning, drone mapping, and total station surveying, Engineering Consulting - Virtual reality: factory design, mechanical design, and technical calculations, Visual communication - Mixed reality: simulations, and animations, Software solutions - Shared reality: Merius Smart Mill® and Project management – “We make it a reality”: tendering procurement, and supervision.

Thomas Marklund, Managing Director, Ditwin

Ditwin AB is consulting company in the Northern part of Sweden that offers knowledge and solutions for the future industry. With partnerships with Siemens digital industries software, Ditwin AB provides solutions that enable customers to achieve sustainable development through digital verification and lifecycle information. In his presentation, Thomas focused on their services on capital asset management -manage information about the facility during its lifetime. It is powered by the digital twin and aims to respond e.g. challenges of information management.

“It’s all about the right information, at the right time, in the right context and right first time, to do right decisions and works”.

At the end of his presentations, Thomas introduced a couple of successful stories from the mining industry and greenfield to the Value Mine webinar audience.

Mari Tenhunen, CEO, Timegate Instruments

Timegate Instruments is a Finnish-based company that provides real-time mineral data to industry customers. Mari highlighted that mineral processing is based on the separation of minerals, but real-time tools for mineral data are lacking. "Mineral analysis has been based mainly on laboratory analysis". The limited analysis leads to limited mineral data which leads to trial and errors based mining, unknown material streams, and excess operations with waste rock. On a high level, this may cause process failures, declining profits, and environmental impact.

Timegate Instrument´s solution enables real-time mineral analysis in a factory environment. The solution is based on the Raman spectroscopy process monitoring concept that eliminates the effects of fluorescence. The solution can be easily integrated to the process line with a measurement probe enabling continuous technology development.

Olle Nilsson, Sales Manager, Optimation

Optimation provides advanced process control, simulations and training, operational analysis (OEE), and machine vision services to production optimization for the process industry. Online 3-dimensional particle measurement (3DPM) offers particle size distribution for material on conveyor belts. Available options are rock bolt and boulder detection.

Key benefits of using 3DPM for collecting practical data are no calibrations needed, reliable data over time, robust data, analyze only visible objects. 3DPM automates laser measuring and visualization of particle data.

Marko Holma, CEO, Muon Solutions

Muon Solutions is Finnish-based cross-disciplinary high-tech engineering, manufacturing, and consulting company founded in 2016. It provides muon detection, geology, geochemistry, and geophysics solutions. "We provide Comsic answers".

Marko began his talk by introducing muon detection technologies for industry use. Muon detectors can be used to measure the density of objects to create density maps in 2D, 3D, and time-sequential mode which can be used in industry to get relevant data. He then provided an overview of Muon Solution´s solutions for mining projects, including mine engineering and geology solutions. Muon solution´s current market offerings include muography and radon monitoring solutions, and training and consultation services related to mineral exploration and geoscience.

Markus Sjölund, Managing Director, Widefind

Widefind is a Sweden-based company that provides positioning-related digital solutions. Markus presented Widefind´s position ecosystems which enables line and 3d positioning of vehicles and personnel in industry environment through sensor and software solutions with APIs. Data from the ecosystem can be integrated with 3rd party applications either through a cloud or on-premises ecosystem.

The ecosystem has been piloted in LKAB´s mining environment, where Widefind now provides 6km accurate and reliable positioning data. Further use case testing will begin after the summer to test and expand the capabilities of the solution.

Conclusion

A successful Value Mine day continued from SME talks to matchmaking meetings where SMEs and industry companies discussed concrete opportunities for future cooperation possibilities.