​​​​​​​Aerospace Industry Lessons for Mining Part 4: Developing a competitive technology and services portfolio

This series of articles is dedicated to exploring the value of the digital twin in the mining industry by using the aerospace industry as an example: they have a product and we have a product, a product that we also need to get to a volatile and competitive market in the most cost-effective and sustainable way.

Part 1 looked at how major aeronautical companies have used Dassault Systèmes 3DEXPERIENCE®platform to create a digital twin inside a virtual twin experience to make their production rate flexible enough to quickly adapt to changing market needs and demands. Parts 2 and 3 examined how the platform also helped the same companies to improve supply chain visibility and on-time delivery and drive development costs down.

This article looks at a fourth key question asked by manufacturers and suppliers within the aerospace industry that also resonates within the mining sector:

1. How can we develop a competitive technology and services portfolio quickly and with minimal risk?

The issue

During the COVID-19 pandemic, the aerospace industry faced unprecedented travel restrictions and passenger cancellations. The lingering financial fall-out has required manufacturers and suppliers to look at how they can develop aircraft and system technologies faster and more efficiently, and get them to market in time to capture market share.  

As a result, aerospace companies recognised that they needed to adopt new agile technologies that could help them to make their own technology and services portfolios more competitive, with minimal risk to their development schedules.

Which is where Dassault Systèmes came in

Companies such as Boeing, Airbus, Bombardier, and Gulfstream wanted to add new technologies that would help them reduce costs while improving quality and services, including:

• reducing no-fault-found removals (where a service technician replaces a part but diagnostic tests do not reveal a problem) and incorrect spares
• improve inventory management, including fleet types and routes
• lowering inventory levels and costs
• adding virtual inspections and certification processes, and
• increasing equipment up-time.

After moving to the Dassault Systèmes 3DEXPERIENCE® platform, aircraft manufacturers and suppliers were able to integrate their systems and unify their data from all product stages — design, engineering, manufacturing, and aftersales — in one central place. And that comprehensive digital continuity in turn enabled them to:

• Link their digital twins to reduce response time and costs

Using the 3DEXPERIENCE® platform opened the door for aircraft manufacturers and suppliers to not only develop digital twins of a variety of individual physical structures, systems, and processes, but also to link those digital twins together to give a complete overview of all structures, systems, and processes.

With full digital twin continuity, OEMs and suppliers are now able to, for example:

• link manufacturing information with information derived from maintenance manuals and the actual use of a product in real-time — critical to decreasing costly no fault found removals and incorrect spares and increasing customer satisfaction, and
• send immediate feedback to the development team when there is an unusually high rate of failure in a specific component or system.

It’s easy to see where mining, too, could benefit from digital continuity and linked digital twins. For example, mines can:

• explore how even small changes in mine processes and technologies can produce significant results in, making the mine more efficient, more sustainable, and more competitive
• use current input data to simulate new conditions to determine the best way to use   new processes and technologies
• benefit from faster, more precise collaboration between teams to build and use simulations
• synchronise simulations in real-time to real-world operations to give complete insight into current operations, and
• send responses from the virtual twin to the real-world operation to respond to unplanned events.

​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​Improve quality/reduce costs in other ways

Digital and digital twin continuity has also enabled aerospace companies to:

• 
  
• perform virtual inspections and deliver certification on demand
• improve inventory management by harmonising fleet types and streamlining routes, and
• minimise inventories by using additive manufacturing (rapid prototyping)

which has improved quality and reduced response times and costs.

With the digital and digital twin continuity that a Cloud platform like Dassault Systèmes 3DEXPERIENCE® provides, mines can also improve quality and reduce costs by:

• monitoring key performance indicators across extraction, transportation, and processing
• quickly identifying production deviations using variance analysis and advanced material balance
• defining work orders for production management down to the shift level, and
• integrating preventive measures into maintenance and servicing to reduce unplanned downtime from breakdowns and poor performance.
• Employ predictive analytics to improve equipment management

Now that aerospace companies have all of their immense amounts of big data aggregated in one place, on the 3DEXPERIENCE® platform, they are able to employ predictive analytics, which identifies patterns and forecasts future outcomes (both risks and opportunities) using historical data combined with statistical modeling, data mining techniques, and machine learning.

Predictive analytics have helped to both improve equipment up-time and reduce unscheduled maintenance.

One strategy to improve equipment management often overlooked by the mining industry is measuring equipment performance, all the way from pit to plant. Using predictive analytics, mines can visualize the patterns in equipment performance and detect important issues, such as:

• carry back — material stuck in the tray after unloading, reducing the tray capacity 
• under-loading to reduce wheel spinning, especially on steep ramps in wet weather
• maintenance issues with a particular truck fleet, and
• under-loaded excavators or incorrect excavator loading.

Next in this series

Dassault Systèmes 3DEXPERIENCE® platform helped our aerospace partners to integrate new technology and make their portfolios more competitive through digital and digital twin continuity.

In the last article in the Aerospace Industry Lessons for Mining series, I will explain how we helped the aerospace industry answer this one remaining question:

• How can we deliver on our economic, environmental, and social promises?

Read the series: