Aerospace Industry Lessons for Mining Part 5: Achieving Sustainability Through Innovation
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, 3, and 4 examined how the platform also helped the same companies to improve supply chain visibility and on-time delivery, drive development costs down, and build a competitive technology and services portfolio.
This final article looks at a fifth key question asked by manufacturers and suppliers within the aerospace industry that also resonates within the mining sector:
- How can we deliver on our economic, environmental, and social promises?
The issue
Fifty years ago, the aerospace industry focused on fast, large, multi-engine aircraft, which moved a lot of people around very well, but also guzzled fuel and produced high volumes of greenhouse gases. Today, the industry’s focus has changed to sustainability and fuel saving, but their progress so far has been slow and they are not yet in sight of meeting their CO2-reduction targets.
To try to turn that around, the industry recognised that it needed to reinvent the way it worked and embrace innovation as a key method to achieve sustainable manufacturing, meet environmental goals, and be good corporate citizens — all while remaining profitable and competitive.
Companies such as Boeing, Airbus, Bombardier, and Gulfstream were looking to meet economic, environmental, and social goals by:
- reducing or eliminating traditional hydrocarbon-based fuel
- developing more efficient aircraft more quickly for maximum sustainability and profit, and
- optimizing research and development, manufacturing, operations, and services to minimise waste.
They adopted Dassault Systèmes 3DEXPERIENCE®as their network platform because it enables them to, among many other things:
- Target decarbonisation
Decarbonisation is the top priority in the aerospace industry’s efforts to combat climate change. But it’s difficult to reduce GHG emissions and decarbonise while staying profitable, especially when the global air transport industry itself set the very ambitious target of net-zero carbon emissions by 2050.
The 3DEXPERIENCE® platform is now helping aerospace companies make low-carbon flights by allowing them to create live virtual replicas of hydrogen fuel, sustainable aviation fuel (SAFs), and electric aircraft technologies for propulsive and non-propulsive energy systems. Within those same virtual twins, they can then plan, test, and tweak these systems long before real-life application. The result is better fuels, better planes, and a stronger value network.
Mining is currently responsible for 4% to 7% of greenhouse-gas emissions globally. Mining, too, must find ways to decarbonise while also locating and extracting the metals that world-wide carbonisation requires.
For mining companies, virtual twinning means that a mine operator can, for instance, experience how a battery will work within an existing fleet of trucks, or what a battery electric vehicle fleet might mean for such things as workshop set-up, resource recovery, and most importantly, mine design. For example, an electric vehicle fleet opens up opportunities for automation that a mine designer could test through a virtual twin to determine how much it would reduce requirements for roadway widths, ramp steepness, and equipment size, and bring the mine even closer to its sustainability goals.
- Consolidate data and technologies in one virtual ecosystem
The 3DEXPERIENCE® platform enables aerospace companies to link all their data — from third-party suppliers and customers as well as their own teams — and their various technologies all in one place.
Through this mass interoperability and end-to-end visibility, aerospace companies can now, for example:
- more effectively source and manage raw materials
- improve material combinations at the molecular level
- simulate 3D data models to test and validate fuel-plane compatibility and lifecycle at all scales throughout the supply chain
- streamline ongoing research and development collaboration on hydrogen fuel, and
- use virtual twin-based scenario planning to safely plan and execute hydrogen fuel transportation and optimise storage capabilities at airports and filling systems.
A virtual ecosystem based on consolidated data is equally valuable for mining.
Traditionally, mining companies have captured operations data manually. This works, but it’s both prone to error and slow. Vital data may take 24 or 48 hours before it reaches a mine manager, for example — too late for that manager to make a change that could improve production, reduce a cost, or increase sustainability.
It also builds organisational and technological silos, where the lack of end-to-end visibility hampers the ability for mine managers to see all stages of the mining process and to identify essentials such as:
- the causes of production delays or equipment downtime
- actual production compared to target production
- how well grade control is performing, and
- where the latest data required for production reporting is located.
However, data integration does not just make operations more efficient. It also makes other essentials, such as resource estimation, far more reliable.
For example, a virtual ecosystem platform makes it possible for mines to go beyond traditional exploratory drilling methods that only look at a small selection of physical samples, to storing, processing, integrating, sharing, and displaying big data from newer sources, such as hyper-spectral core scanning, to improve orebody knowledge. This in turn leads to:
- better blending of material for processing
- more consistent plant throughput
- higher product quality, and
- less waste of the geological asset.
- Drive sustainability through collaboration
Creating sustainable air travel is a complex process, requiring a diversity of knowledge and know-how and seamless transmission of data and information both inside and outside a company.
With the 3DEXPERIENCE® platform, aerospace teams now seamlessly collaborate across the globe using integrated technologies, products, and services. This integration also enables companies to optimise operations, identify efficiencies, complete predictive maintenance, and improve environmental performance throughout each work system.
Mining can benefit from collaboration, too. For example, mines can collaborate between teams and with suppliers, customers, and communities to:
- create schedules that optimise extracting, producing, and transporting the geological asset in ways that ensure the smallest possible carbon footprint, and
- ensure operations meet the regulatory and industry best practice requirements to maintain a green license to operate.
Contact me
Sustainability is about being more efficient, which means doing more with less and building lean processes. The foundation of becoming more efficient in mining lies, I believe, in a technologically advanced platform like Dassault Systèmes 3DEXPERIENCE®.
In addition to providing the digital continuity and digital twin technology that leads to quick, effective simulations and seamless collaboration, the 3DEXPERIENCE® also enables mining companies to incorporate their sustainability KPIs into their day-to-day work. This in turn transforms the platform into a powerful change-management tool — a tool that mines can use to adapt their processes in response to new ESG market demands and challenges.
I hope this series of articles on how the mining industry can learn from the path forged by the aerospace industry to become more flexible, competitive, profitable, and sustainable using the Dassault Systèmes 3DEXPERIENCE® platform has given you a few things to think about. Please get in touch if you have any questions or would like to learn more. I am happy to help!
