Mining Goes Digital – Mueller et al.

(Eds)
© 2019 Taylor & Francis Group, London, ISBN 978-0-367-33604-2

Digital technology trends and their implementation

in the mining industry

L. Barnewold
Institute Mineral Resources Engineering RWTH University, Aachen, Germany

ABSTRACT: The actual process of the technologically induced change (i.e. digital trans-
formation) is referred to as “digitalization”, and vague terms like those that “Industry 4.0”
are used to describe the necessary and inevitable change to all business sectors because of the
evolution and revolution of currently used technologies. This work focuses on the system-
atical identification of those digital trends for the mining industry by using co-word analy-
sis together with text mining algorithms from expert articles. Network analyses are used to
investigate the relations between the significant trends. Furthermore, a method to detect the
implementation level of individual trends in active mines is introduced. The methodology was
able to identify a variety of digital trends and their relevance, such as “automation” and basic
technologies such as “big data”, “internet of things”, “artificial intelligence” and “machine
learning” which can be used as orientation points for future digital transformation processes.

1 INTRODUCTION

Looking at the last 200 years, steam engines, electricity or the use of computers represent
important technological inventions. Each technical achievement influenced the industrial
landscape for a certain period and led to strong industrial growth, but also to a high degree of
change. Today we are faced with such a technological development again. The so-called forth-
industrial revolution, “digital transformation” or simply “Industry 4.0” plays an important
role in every business sector and will be a basis for the future industrial development. (Paul
2016) In contrast to the previous technical evolutions, a unique and clear core technology
is not discernible. Rather, it consists of a complex network of the most diverse approaches
and technologies. The complexity and inflationary use results in an ambiguity of the men-
tioned terms. (Bassi 2017; Chiarello et al. 2018) Future developments and trend analyses for
the mining industry were already been carried out in previous work, Stanway et al. (2015)
deals with the general direction and structure of innovative processes and trends in the min-
ing industry and thus more with influencing factors that encourage the implementation of
trends (Boudreau-Trudel et al. 2015). Other work focuses on specific technologies, such as for
example new machinery in mobile open pit equipment section in Lumley (2012), Lumley et al.
(2012), the SX-EW method in copper processing in Ericsson (2012) or new filtering technolo-
gies presented by Palmer (2016). These trends are focusing more on mechanical developments
of new machinery and new basic processes. A discussion of digital technologies is mainly used
in direct relation to detailed existing processes, especially for the processing and beneficiation
industries. (Jämsä-Jounela 2007; Groenveld and Rozou 2016; Ofstie and Kargutkar 2015; van
Duin et al. 2013). However, an overview of all digital trends relevant to the mining industry
from reliable sources do not exists. Due to this, the research question was formulated as:
Which digital trends are currently relevant for the mining industry and how can they
be systematically captured?
This paper deals with the identification of current digital trends directly related to
the “Industry 4.0” discussion. In order to ensure a certain relevance of the trends and a

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reproducibility of the analysis at any time, a general systematics for the determination will be
developed in the following.
In order to assess the significance of individual trends for the mining industry, it is impor-
tant to have an overview of the use of technology in active mining operations. A research
using conventional search engines is difficult due to the lack of search approaches (such as
the name of the mines). This leads to the second research question of this work: How can the
degree of implementation of digital trends be determined from reliable sources?
The developed method will allow stakeholders of the mining industry to evaluate the land-
scape of digital trends for the mining industry at any time and use this as a general orienta-
tion for future developments on the sector. The analysis regarding the implementation level
of individual technologies will make the progress visible in the industry and will allow the
classification of individual mining operations on a larger scale.

2 METHOD

The methodology developed to identify digital trends and links in the mining industry is
based on a co-word analysis and consist of three steps (see Figure 1a). The basic instruments
used for this investigation are text-mining algorithms, which are programmed based on the
data mining software Rapidminer. Text Mining turns unstructured text datasets in struc-
tured tokenized data and is used to search for hidden knowledge and semantic information.
This method allows to analyze a high range of research papers in a short time. (Liddy 2000)
(Salloum et al. 2018, pp. 375–376).

2.1 Text sources

The input data is generated from two different sources. Assuming that leading management
consulting firms are an indicator for future developments and trends in the industry, all pub-
lished reports, white paper and case studies of the top rated consulting firms by the business
magazine “Forbes” are taken as a first input source. Additionally, the collection of techni-
cal documents, conference papers and articles with the focus on the mining sector from the
online library “onemine.org” represents the second source. Especially all papers from 2010
up until today in English are used for the investigation of the implementation level in the
mines.

2.2 Defining keywords

In a first step, all consulting papers are reviewed for digital technologies associated with the
future development of the mining industry. The identified trends are sorted according to
synonyms, such as “computer” and “PC” into sub groups. In a next step, these groups are
organized in main categories again.

Forbes
Paper

a)
I
P3pe r Tre1nds •
occurancy

links

modlllarity

0neMine~cr9

TextM1nlng-
Paper
b) An~tvses O«uramyofuends ln pAper
~•n:hforpro- nouns(Mines)

Figure 1. Methodology used to identify trends in expert articles.

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2.3 Extracting and quantifying digital trends
Secondly, the identified trends are extracted and quantified by a text-mining algorithm from
the consulting papers. This is done by on a standard machine with two cores @ 2.3 GHz and
8 GB ram. The algorithm analyzes the respective trends according to the occurrence in a sin-
gle paper (Term Occurrence) and total number of words in respective paper. From this data
the nominal term frequency is calculated, which allows to compare the term frequency (TF)
from different papers with different length. The binary term occurrence (BTO) can be used
to determine the number of articles in which the respective trend was mentioned. The paper
frequency (PF) results from the total number of articles and the BTO.
Content relations between individual trends help to classify these and draw a superordi-
nate picture of all relations of current digital technologies. The links are extracted from the
consulting paper by using the order of words in the text to draw a conclusion on which trends
are mentioned together and might have a direct connection. To increase the validity of these
connections, semantic relatedness from Wikipedia are used to complete the network. Particu-
larly, the direct links to related topics or terms and assigned categories are of great interest
and investigated for more connections. Detailed information about the usage of Wikipedia
related text-mining is provided by Gabrilovich and Markovitch (2007) and Simanovsky and
Ulanov (2011). The algorithm were run on a 4 cores @ 3.4 GHz and 32 GB machine.
Trends and the links between the trends can be seen as a big network. The resulting complex
is further investigated in networking analyses, by focusing on the key parameters weighted
degree, centrality as well as layout analytics, which were discussed in Cherven (2015) and
Opsahl et al. (2010). The open source program Gephi is used to visualize the network and to
highlight the links between the trends in a networking structure. Nodes and edges character-
ize these structures. In this case, the nodes are represented by the individual trends. Edges
show the relation between two trends. (Chiarello et al. 2018). A forced-directed algorithm
(Force Atlas 2 by Jacomy et al. (2014)), which takes attraction and repulsion of the single
trends and their connections in consideration was used for the layout of the network.
As mentioned in the introduction, a reliable and extensive database is necessary to analyze
the implementation level of new digital technologies. In this case, articles from the onemine.
org database are used together with a text mining method (see Figure 1b), which filters the
paper for the identified trends. The resulting papers are then searched for all proper nouns
and, in a next step, analyzed for mine operation names. The mine and the mentioned trend
can then be linked.

3 RESULTS

3.1 Data collection from the database

The Forbes list for metals and mining consulting consists of 13 international acting compa-
nies. Eight of these companies offer 28 mining related online white papers in total. 26 papers
from seven companies address directly digital mining trends. The request on “onemine.org”
database focuses on all research papers published after 2010 in English via seven professional
mining organizations. This resulted in 2400 individual papers.
By analyzing the consulting papers, 209 digital trend terms were recognized. After elimi-
nating duplicates and use of a uniform spelling, 107 individual terms were identified. Fur-
thermore, the trends were divided into 21 synonym groups and finally clustered in the five
categories that are shown in Table 1.

3.2 Extracted digital trends

The text-mining algorithm took around 3 min. In a first run the term occurrence (TO) of
the single trends were calculated for every paper, where 820 mentions in all 26 papers were
detected. Figure 2 shows the top 20 trends with the highest TO in all consulting white papers.
In detail, the results show a significant peak for the term “automation” with 153 mentions.
11
 Table 1. Categorization of determined trends.

Category Number of trends

Automation and robotics 22

IT infrastructure 18
Advanced process control 24
Advanced simulations 23
Data analytics 20

160

140

120
"u
"t 100
;:l
u
u 80
0
E
.... 60
r"

'''~'''''''tl!TTTTlllJllf
40

20

Figure 2. Top 20 of the most frequently cited trends.

automation
big data
internet or things
robotics

real time data · -··- - - - - - - - " " " " • Paper Frequency
3d printing •-•. .- - - - - - - - " " " "
artificial intelligence • -·
•---------
drones • Term Frequency
machine learning nominizcd
data analytics
predictive maintenance 1
__,..______

0% 20% 40% 60% 80% 100%

Figure 3. Term and paper frequency of eleven trends.

The terms “robotics” and “internet of things” are named 52 and 49 times followed by
“advanced analytics” and “drones”.
As already discussed in the method section, the TF, especially the nominal TF, gives an
expanded view on the trends and allows further analyses. When looking at the average of the
nominal TF together with the PF the picture from the term occurrence can be validated as seen
in Figure 3. “Automation” occurs in 80% of all papers with a high FT value. Different from the
previous section, big data plays a significant role in 60% of the manuscripts with the second
highest TF. In total, the diagram shows a connection between TF and PF in most cases. The
term “drones” is mentioned in 40% of the white paper but with only 13% of a nominal TF.
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3.3 Network of identified digital trends
The algorithm for internal and Wikipedia related links took an average calculation time of
30 min. In total 1389 undirected links between the trends were detected. The dataset is visual-
ized as a network structure in Figure 4. Additional properties of the nodes, as the size and
color represent the weighted degree and categories of the trend. The position and distance of
the nodes indicates how related these trends are. The trends “artificial intelligence”, “internet
of things“, “machine learning” and “virtual reality mine training” are based in the middle
and act as a central points of the diagram.
The analyzed weighted degree of every single node, shows again, “automation” as a lead-
ing trend with 52 relations, followed by “artificial intelligence” (35), “machine learning” (37),
“3D printing” (31) and “virtual reality mine training” (24). This correlates to the positions of
the trends and reflects the central role of these nodes in the network.

3.4 Extracting trends and mine names from research database

The algorithm for analyzing the onemine datatbase were executed on a 4 cores @ 3.4 GHz
and 32 GB machine and took in the average 25 min. In total 2400 paper were analyzed and
25 individual trends in 164 paper were recognized. In the filtered papers, proper name lists
were created and 92 papers with a possible mine name citation were detected. By reviewing

Figure 4. Network structure of all trends with the weighted degree as node size.

13
 100

90

80

70
~
c 60
~
~
u
50
8
5
l-
40

30

20

10
0 •••••••••••••• , , ,

Figure 5. Term occurrence of the recognized trends in the onemine database.

the papers again manually, 65 papers with 158 mining operations were identified. The TO
from all papers are shown in Figure 5. Especially “automation”, “real time data”, “advanced
process control” and “machine learning” show high values.

4 DISCUSSION

Even though the identified trends come from a number of experts of the industry, the trends
only can be seen as indictors for the industry. The analysis does not leave any statement
about the technical benefit as well as urgency or relevance for a single mining operation.
Moreover, this analyses gives an overview about discussed digital technologies for the mining
industry and where possible potential is seen by experts. The examined scientific articles
confirm the significance of the analysis, since the same trends are seen as trend-setting.
Additionally, the named trends, like “automation”, “IoT”, “big data”, etc. are reflected in
the trend analysis for the manufacturing or logistic industry and play a significant role there
(cf. TippingandKauschkeTipping and Kauschke (2016), Kovacs and Kot (2016), Tao et al.
(2017), Grazia Speranza (2018)). This also supports the importance of this development in
the mining industry.

4.1 Which digital trends are currently relevant for the mining industry and how can
they be systematically captured?
As seen in the results section, automation is the significant trend, which will or already does
affect the mining industry. The high degree of automation highlights the complex connection
to other terms, which are effected by, or affect an automated process. An essential reason
for the dominance of automation is also the manifold use of this technology, e.g. process
automation in beneficiation processes, automation of machines up to the close relation to
autonomies. Same tendency is reflected in the results of terms “Internet of things”, “real
time data”, “artificial intelligent”, “machine learning” and “3D printing”. Different to auto-
mation, all trends are centrally positioned in the network. This shows how important these
trends are as fundamental technologies in the future development of the mining industry.
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Automation, on the other hand, is positioned not directly in the center of the network, what
leads to the fact, that automation has influenced many other technologies but is not a basic
technology for the near future.
The Term “big data” has the second highest PF and TF with over 60%. However, the
TO of “big data” correlates quite low to other terms. This is due to the fact, that big data
is named in a lot of papers, but not with a special focus. Nevertheless, “big data” is seen as
a major trend in the mining industry by the consulting experts. Drones plays a significant
role in 40% of all papers with a relative high TF. This results from some special issue papers
with focus on UAVs or Drones. Terms that are directly linked to “ERP”, “data analytics” or
“drone” have a more satellite-based position, which suggests an independent development of
this technology.

4.2 How can the degree of implementation of digital trends be determined

from reliable sources?
The results from the developed algorithm show that in a short time frame a high variety
of papers can be analyzed. Compared to a normal manual literature review with conven-
tional search engines, the considerable papers could be reduced by 44%. Besides this, the
201 manual request for every single trend in the database is not necessary which saves a lot
of time during a literature review. Nevertheless, this algorithm does not clearly identify mines
in connection with used digital technology trends. The guessed mines from the proper noun
list, generated by the algorithm are not 100% reliable, due to that the name of the mines often
come from landscapes, people’s names or regions. Additions like mine or operation helps
to identify a mine, but are not used in every case. The algorithm can be improved by using
neuronal networks as Poria et al. (2016) show for opinion mining. An overview of the imple-
mentation level of digital trends in active mining operations is not useful to create a rank-
ing or to compare different operations, due to total different infrastructure, used equipment
and available infrastructure. This overview can rather be seen as a self-evaluation to identify
options and possible improvement for the own operation.

5 CONCLUSION

The developed text-mining method is a timesaving and therefore easily repeatable methodol-
ogy for performing trend analyses independent of the data source. In this paper, recent digital
trends were extracted from consulting papers of the TOP 20 consulting agencies. The results
draw a clear picture of the leading technologies, “automation”, “internet of things” or “real
time data”, which are and will be significant for the mining industry in the next years. The
identified technologies play an important role for the manufacturing and logistics industry,
which underlines the relevance and reliability of the data source. An overview about the
implementation level in the mining sector helps to asses the value of a certain technology
for the industry. Data is rarely available and difficult to search in existing databases. For
this purpose, a text-mining algorithm was developed which searches document sets for given
keywords and associates them with the mining operation names mentioned. Future work will
focus on improvements of the proper noun recognition and drawing a detailed picture of the
implementation level of trends in the mining industry.

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