Forewords

This last post of our Value Mine series focuses on mining industry SME talks from innovative companies from Finland and Sweden. Previous posts were Sitra, Bosch Rexroth, Boliden, Epiroc, and Hannukainen Mining.

The Value Mine crossborder event was organized 16th June 2022 as a hybrid side event of Euromine Expo in Skellefteå, Sweden. The event attracted participants from industry, SMEs, and other actors to hear and discuss the mining industry´s digital future.

ThingWave AB, Jens Eliasson, CEO

Thingwawe AB is a young innovative company working on IoT, especially in Industrial IoT (IIoT). Their Digitalized Ground Support is a holistic solution for remote sensing, storage, visualization, alarms, etc. with monitoring smart rock bolts and convergence sensors. Their smart ventilation system with AIR-Q sensors can help the mine to reduce fans and therefore their energy consumption.

Thingwawe has developed RealMine 3D™ which is a digital twin of mine tunnels. It is a browser-based visualization and data integration tool which handles IoT-sensors, positioning, ventilation, seismic data, live and historical data, etc.

“We can import a full mine. You can look at the mine in full 3D and see actually what’s going on. It currently supports 25k objects with live updates.”

BI Nordic AB, Michael Eriksson, CEO

BI Nordic Tech company located in Skellefteå founded in 2016. They are the main supplier of BI platform for two mining companies in Sweden.

In his presentation Michael talked first about remotely controlled machines increasing the requirements of the wireless networks in the mines and how critical it is to have network accessibility and retainability 24/7. BI Nordic has defined a measurement methodology which simulates the behavior of real machines and re-create the unique traffic pattern.

Secondly he talked about how important it is to have a BI Platform because of the huge amount of data from different vendors and systems that needs to be organized. BI Nordic has created BI Nordic Mining Platform, which is a big data platform in Azure using standard components. They are a Microsoft silver partner and can offer services for the entire BI process.

Data Ductus AB, Annacarin Falkman, Head of

“Can we save the planet with software?” asks Annacarin. “I believe we can! The software industry can contribute to the green transition.”

Data Ductus AB is an IT consulting company from Skellefteå who offers complete project deliveries, partnerships, application lifetime management and R & D as a service. Data Ductus has 290 employees over the world. They are partners with LKAB in digitalization - integrations, automation, software, new systems, data quality, data analysis, BI, etc. They are also working in machine vision solutions and research projects.

“Companies may work on different things but have the same challenges. Why not collaborate and solve these challenges together? I leave the door open and say that we can contribute with software.”

Palsatech Oy, Hannu Ahola, Chief geologist

Palsatech Oy is providing geological and geotechnical solutions for the mining and exploration industry. Innovative and cost-efficient thinking to solve various problems in the field, mine sites or logging facilities. They have clients from top 5 mining companies in the world to “one-man-show” junior companies. Palsatech was founded in 2013 and has 62 employees.

PalsaCenter is in Kemi where they have four core logging areas, core storages, core cutting, sample treatment, sample measurements, private hubs for clients and R & D innovations. Trends they see in the mining industry is that data needs to be available fairly quickly and executives are working remotely, even without visiting the project. They have seen that clients want to be able to make decisions remotely or at least follow what is happening.

“PalsaCenter Sodankylä will open November 2022. Now we are thinking where we will go next, maybe Sweden?”

Indalgo Oy, Petteri Yliniemi, COO

Indalgo is established in 2010 in Oulu, Finland. Their customers are in the manufacturing and steel industries. They have 15 employees and they are actively recruiting. Their background is in R&D work at the University of Oulu. Their goal is to be the best provider of AI solutions for the steel industry and selected Industry 4.0 customers.

They offer Indalgo Algorithm Services (IAS) based on advanced AI algorithms and customized modern web-based user interfaces. They start collaboration with pre-study of the customer’s needs and offer continuous improvement in close collaboration with the customer.

“Indalgo will provide advanced solutions with certainty, agility and pace. We use tried and tested methodology for program management and we have an experienced team that has done this before and brings in lessons learned from metals and other industries.”

Augumenta Oy, Peter Antoniac, Co-founder and CTO

“How can the workers of the mine access the data seamlessly? There will always be humans involved. So you want to connect the machines and the humans. How you do it? Using smart glasses.”

Augumenta is specialized in industrial augmented reality. Smart glasses with augmented reality allows miners to interact with the data hands free, unobtrusive and intuitive. Glasses stay on the head and are always on and they never miss a critical alarm. Benefits are: see what I see, video and sensors, intuitive, boost productivity, reduce mistakes, maximize uptime, stay safe. We can even notify the miner if they are tired or we can get help to the miner if the helmet is down.

“Smartglasses teleports miners into the digital age. Act now: save money sooner and stay ahead of the competition.”

Ditwin AB, Thomas Marklund, CEO and Therese Niemann, Business Development Manager

Ditwin AB is a consulting company in northern Sweden and they are experienced in digital twins, Industry 4.0, AI and IoT among other things. They have a partnership with Siemens Digital Industries Software and in their presentation today they concentrated especially on Capital Asset Management.

Therese told about industry challenges which corcern bid/supply chain management, design complexity, interoperability (lots of systems who can’t communicate), construction performance, operations optimization and carbon footprint.

Ditwin's solution is Siemens Capital Asset Lifecycle Management (CALM) which helps to build the digital twin and provides a single point of access to asset information. CALM simplifies information management, shortens delivery timeframes and reduces operational costs.

Conclusion

A successful Value Mine day continued from SME talks to matchmaking meetings where companies could discuss concrete opportunities for future cooperation possibilities.