FLSmidth, a leading supplier of equipment and services to the global minerals industries, and GE have joined to create digital solutions for increasing productivity in the minerals sector. New solutions developed on GE’s cloud-based Predix platform will use FLSmidth’s experience in minerals processing and GE’s Industrial Internet of Things (IIoT) capabilities to maximize the potential of connected equipment units.
FLSmidth said it will build solutions on top of GE’s Predix platform with applications for managing process flows, allowing customers to leverage process data and analytics for monitoring, benchmarking their performance, and predicting maintenance of their equipment.
According to the two companies, operating costs account for around 80% of the total cost of ownership for running a mining operation, and energy is the single largest component. An ongoing monitoring of processes makes it possible to increase productivity significantly.
“Mining companies already collect significant volumes of data, but currently, only a fraction of it is used. This will be the first available solution for a full coherent process monitoring to leverage optimization solutions offered by a full service provider like FLSmidth,” said Jens Almdal, head of global R&D at FLSmidth. “By connecting our control applications with GE’s platform, we can bring FLSmidth’s proven expertise in resource optimization and productivity together with GE’s monitoring and data analytics solution to create an unrivaled combination that will dramatically improve the productivity in the cement and minerals industries.”
The FLSmidth control applications integrated on GE’s Predix platform will be launched in the third quarter of 2016.
