EarlyBirds Helping Businesses in Taking Advantage of Innovation in the Mining Industry

EarlyBirds, an Australian company that has established a business to business (B2B) open ecosystem for innovation that offers a way for early adopters, innovators, and subject matter experts (SMEs) to come together and develop partnerships to accelerate technology advancement and adoption, wants to emphasize that they can also help businesses in the mining industry to overcome the challenges they face as they try to accelerate their adoption of digital technologies. Mining companies need these technologies to increase productivity and improve the efficiency of operations as they face the cha

llenges of the future. These early adopter mining companies may be better equipped to come up with solutions to comply with environmental, social and governance (ESG) goals and the competing priorities of emerging market dynamics.

Investing in Mining Tech

Fortunately, the mining industry, according to PWC, has been one of the few industries that emerged from the COVID 19 pandemic economic crisis in great financial and operational shape. This allows them to have the financial strength to make huge and daring moves and investments towards the future in response to the challenges they face.

Digital Acceleration Index

However, according to the Digital Acceleration Index of the Boston Consulting Group, the mining and metals industry is lagging behind when it comes to the adoption of digital technologies. The index indicates that they are 30 to 40 percent less digitally mature when compared to other industries like chemicals or automotive. The industry has unique challenges when it comes to digital adoption. For one, their workforces tend to be blue collar and are usually less familiar with digital solutions compared to the workforces of other industries. Furthermore, they typically work in remote locations with poor network bandwidth and where the rugged terrain makes it a challenge to deploy digital sensors.

Wide Choice of Technologies

Mining companies also face a number of major obstacles with regards to the adoption of new digital tools and in choosing from among the wide range of disruptive technological innovations. Mining technology covers a broad spectrum of physical and virtual challenges and opportunities that are currently being experienced by the industry. These technologies have an impact on both above ground and underground operations with almost every part of the mining operations value chain, from exploration to supply chain and production operations, being affected by these new and emerging innovations.

There are many technologies to choose from when mining companies search for particular technologies that can provide the solution they need. For instance, some mining companies are using the Internet of Things, while others are using artificial intelligence or AI and some are applying robotics. The list of possible technologies is virtually endless and this is where a specialised partner with an open innovation ecosystem can help.

EarlyBirds Solving Technical and Business Challenges

In the EarlyBirds open innovation ecosystem, mining companies can become early adopters of emerging technologies. With early adopters, SMEs and mine tech startups, scaleup and mining service providers meeting together, the EarlyBirds Explorer and Challenger programs provide a fertile ground for early adopters and innovators to come up with solutions to particular problems.

The EarlyBirds open innovation ecosystem has two main parts. One is the Explorer program that has the purpose of accelerating the process of technological innovation for the whole company as a service. The Explorer program has a number of important features, including: a nominated SME for the business; a platform enterprise license; weekly webinars to help stimulate innovation in the organisation; quarterly and monthly innovation days; and a focus on certain innovations. The other component is the Challenger program, which is for those who prefer to focus on particular challenges for the business one at a time. EarlyBirds also offers the Edzility framework to assist companies with regards to continuous improvement that allows the organisation to have improved organisational agility and competitive edge.

Those who are interested in learning more about the Early Birds and how it can help mining companies adopt new digital technologies to improve their operations can check out the EarlyBirds website at earlybirds.io.