Part 1 - Combining PLM with virtual twin experiences
For many car, boat, and aircraft manufacturers, product lifecycle management (PLM) is a fact of life. They have a product they need to manage from the glimmer of an idea through to design, development, manufacturing, sales, and end-of-life. And many have chosen to pursue PLM to help them deliver a high-quality product at as low a cost as possible and in the fastest possible time to market.
Mining also produces a product, and our mining value chain is in fact not all that different from that of a SUV, yacht or plane. Yet PLM has not yet been widely adopted in our industry, which means we have been missing out on some important breakthroughs and innovation coming from PLM thinking and software. For example:
- by linking geoscience and engineering design data with a bill of work and materials and a range of other data sources, PLM software makes it easy to control overlapping timelines and to track and share data at every point along the value chain, and
- by allowing geology, planning and operations teams to collaborate in real time, PLM software helps break down silos, improve efficiency, increase accuracy, and reduce risk.
However....
While I believe we can learn a lot from PLM methods and principles, our industry is clearly not the same as car or plane manufacturing. We need to take what works from PLM — especially viewing what we do as creating a product, from ideation to end-of-life — and then customise it to suit the complexities of our industry and the lengthy process of moving from mineral discovery to mine decommissioning.
We also need to provide our teams and stakeholders with ways to experience the progress of the mining value chain, to experience the way our product moves over the life of an asset, because that is the fastest and best method for shared understanding and reliable decision making. And the key to that is PLM combined with virtual twin experiences.
PLM + virtual twins
When you visualise the mining value chain what do you see? For many working in mining it is a linear chain, which moves, like a car, from design to assembly line to sales room. But that’s not the way mining actually works, is it? Mining is continually having to adapt and adjust to nature and has many more feedback loops than the average car manufacturer, meaning we also end up with less control over the results of our work.
Another, potentially more useful way to visualise the mining value chain is as a complex series of interconnected systems — a system of systems. For the chain to work at its best, each system must be able to work easily with, and connect to, the next.
For the optimal mining value chain, we need to:
- identify our systems
- understand the links and relationships between each system
- understand the boundaries of, and remove any barriers between, the systems, and
- encourage interaction between the systems to take advantage of synergies and ideas.
Through virtual twinning, you can begin to visualise your systems as a collection of tiered virtual twins, each with its own data sources, processes, and areas of knowledge. For example:
If the individual processes and data sources contained in these tiers do not work together, if the tiers do not connect, the mining value chain will be damaged. Through a virtual connection, however, the tiers are linked in a way that enables them to work together to respond to problems that arise along the value chain. Together, teams can run comprehensive virtual scenarios that allow them to identify, understand, and digitally resolve problems in the virtual world, and then apply their solutions quickly in the real world.
Digital twins v. virtual twin experiences
A digital twin is the digital prototype of an object — its virtual version. Virtual twin experiences, on the other hand, not only create 3D digital twins, they also allow you to model, visualise, and simulate entire processes and systems, and to add in real-world data and feedback to continually inform and improve your data.
For example, a car manufacturer might use virtual twin experiences across the product lifecycle to:
- generate a design
- simulate how that design would hold up in various situations, such as braking in heavy snow or driving long distances in high temperatures
- visualise and compare how different suppliers — secondary aluminum manufacturers, for example — would affect both the supply chain and the overall carbon emission levels of the finished product
- analyse data coming in from a process or the product in its real-world usage, run additional tests, and make changes to ensure continuous improvement and prevent unexpected downtime, and
- determine how various materials in the vehicle can be recovered and reused at end of life.
Added value to using virtual twin experiences across the product lifecycle: you will capture the collective knowledge and organizational know-how of individuals and teams from one end of the value chain to the other, which can then spark new ideas and novel or enhanced thinking.
Next in this series
For the next three articles in the Re-imagining the Way We Work series, I will look at how mines can:
- apply virtual twin experiences to every aspect of the mining value chain, from mineral exploration to production to decommissioning, and
- what benefits mines can expect to realise from using virtual twin experiences, using case examples.
About the author
@AJ - GEOVIA R&D Portfolio Management Director
Anthony is an experienced Product Management Director with a demonstrated history of working in the natural resources software industry. He has worked as a consultant using and teaching the use of software applications as well as providing guidance on the development of software applications for the last 10 years. Skills developed during this time are largely focused towards geological modelling, resource evaluation, mine planning and product management.
