Establishing remote control centers of a mining operation: strategic prerequisites and implementation stages

Abstract

The article proposes the following plan to implement a project to create a remote control center of a mining company: (1) creation of infrastructural and technological conditions for remote control of equipment and mining operations; (2) organization of the control center that is located at a significant distance from the mining operations and successively transfer to it the functions of planning, monitoring, control and dispatching; (3) development of methodological and regulatory support for mining operations with the use of robotic equipment and transition to remote control and autonomous mining technologies. It is shown that the necessary condition for effective execution of the project is the development and industrial implementation of digital platform solutions for integration, end-to-end optimization, centralized data collection and analysis, control and monitoring of the complete management cycle of mining production. Arguments are provided for the expediency of organizing dedicated service management companies (based on IT companies, i.e. developers and/or integrators of digital mining technologies) for remote management of the Intelligent Mining Enterprise. The necessity of creating analytical centers to support decision making for optimization of mining production processes (as one of the key sub-stages of the project) on the basis of leading research organizations and Universities of mining profile is justified. Goals and objectives of the Remote Analytical Center are formulated using the case of the Digital Mining Production Laboratory at the Empress Catherine II St. Petersburg Mining University. It is stated that creation of analytical centers for decision support will contribute to training of qualified academic staff and accelerate the transformation processes of the Russian higher education.