Digital Transformation Underground – Localized Automation and the Journey to an Autonomous Operation

2021

Todd Smith

Hecla Mining Company’s Greens Creek mine is an underground, cut-and-fill, long-hole-stoping, silver mine located in Admiralty, Alaska, USA.  Greens Creek chose MST Global as their digital transformation partner in 2012 and has been working with them to increase safety; improve productivity and efficiency; and reduce costs by enabling applications for over 8 years. This paper will provide real life examples of how Hecla and MST have worked together to reduce heavy vehicle to light vehicle interactions underground with MST’s situational awareness solution; increase safety and productivity with MST’s equipment and personnel location tracking solutions; reduce costs with MST’s Ventilation on Demand solution; and how they have enabled numerous 3rd party applications like remote blasting; and the automation of their Sandvik loader fleet via AutoMine over a single, ruggedized, fibre-based, high-bandwidth, low-latency, Wi-Fi network. It will also give a sneak peek of MST’s next generation AXON and HELIX Platforms to show how Mine Operators can future proof their mines and reduce the total cost of ownership with an integrated, modular, next-generation communication, tracking and automation platform.

Keywords: Hecla; Greens Creek; underground, cut-and-fill; long-hole-stoping silver mine; MST Global; digital transformation partner; increase safety; improve productivity and efficiency; reduce costs; enabling applications; situational awareness; equipment and personnel location tracking; ventilation on demand; remote blasting; automation; Sandvik; AutoMine ruggedized, fibre-based, high-bandwidth, low-latency, Wi-Fi; network; AXON; HELIX; platform

cim.paperattributes.header.paperkeywordsfrench: Hecla; Greens Creek; underground, cut-and-fill; long-hole-stoping silver mine; MST Global; digital transformation partner; increase safety; improve productivity and efficiency; reduce costs; enabling applications; situational awareness; equipment and personnel location tracking; ventilation on demand; remote blasting; automation; Sandvik; AutoMine ruggedized, fibre-based, high-bandwidth, low-latency, Wi-Fi; network; AXON; HELIX; platform