In the digital era, technology is meticulously changing how organisations operate and perform day-to-day tasks. Asset-intensive organisations like oil and gas, utilities, energy, manufacturing, and construction increasingly deploy advanced automation solutions to conduct operations more productively and at lower costs. The population is growing continuously, and there is an increased burden on the mining business. With every industry utilising new technologies to boost proficiency and cost savings, the mining industry is also in the race. There is a critical need to adapt real-time monitoring and control systems while conducting the operations to guarantee mining safety. Hence, the mining industry is looking for advanced automation solutions to gain an edge. According to a study available on the internet, 70 per cent of mining organisations worldwide believe that advanced automation and industrial IoT solutions would give them a significant advantage against competitors. Nonetheless, advanced automation and industrial IoT technology have been around for some time now, representing connected machines and sensors. However, the mining industry has been slow to accept this technology, frequently deciding to stay with traditional and manual processes. Mining is a precarious industry. Long-held problems are still persistent, like hearing loss due to high noise frequency and lung diseases because of dust inhalation. Further, the risk of breakdown increases enormously as the mines get deeper. Increasingly unusual atmospheres and surface temperatures worsen the situation. All this adds up to reduced efficiency and higher operational costs for the industry. While many technologies, like artificial intelligence, machine learning, drones, etc., are already being used in the mining industry, advanced automation and Industrial IoT solve the industry's challenges at the core by helping mining organisations increase efficiency and reduce operational costs. Let us check out how: Cost optimisation: The primary purpose of mining organisations’utilisation of automation solutions is to increase productivity and cost optimisation. By implementing sensors on mining hardware and systems that monitor equipment, diggers can utilise vast sets of data, also known as big data, to find more cost-effective methods of conducting their operations and further develop efficiency along these lines. The deployment of sensors likewise can diminish operational downtime largely, as organisations can utilise the data accumulated to train their machinery and prevent breakdowns, which eventually brings down the cost. Forecasting faults: As time takes its toll on rotating machine components, even an untrained ear can often hear the difference. It is relatively easy to tell when your car has a defective wheel bearing because of the distinct noise it makes. However, mining excavators are so noisy that it is impossible to distinguish any audible change. This is where vibration-based condition monitoring comes in handy. After all, the audible noise is nothing more than vibrations at a particular frequency. A properly configured condition monitoring system will recognise a spike in vibration amplitude in a specific frequency range as the signature of an impending fault. The height of the spike denotes the severity of the damage, indicating how soon a given part should be replaced. Condition monitoring module helps mining organisations to collect detailed data from mining equipment and deliver them with insights into equipment functionality. Additional analysis of the collected data helps operators predict potential threats and avoid sudden downtime. Predictive maintenance can help mining companies cut costs and optimise machinery for excellent performance and throughput. Condition-based maintenance streamlines spare parts logistics and eliminates the need to replace perfectly healthy components long before the end of their service life. This helps with the enormous potential for cost savings. If a manufacturer can track the health of their machines, he can drastically reduce the probability of failure. This, of course, is also in the best interest of the operator. Builders of mobile equipment can also use selected data to optimise their designs and pursue new business models such as equipment monitoring as a service. In this case, the operator is relieved of the fleet maintenance headache and is informed when a replacement part will be delivered and installed. You've got mail from your machine Just imagine that, if an event happening on the machine is communicated to you via mail or text message. This changes how we are notified about an event and helps make quicker decisions. These events can be related to alarms or the production status of machines. mapp components help integrate such solutions quickly. These modular components are developed in such a way that mappAlarm detects the alarm events and mappAudit detects the various events of users and machines while integrating with mappTweet helps in the notification of the event to the outside world. The operator can easily link these components so that, whenever a configured event occurs, he will receive an email or text message. This message can inform the technician or operator that a specific bearing is worn and should be replaced within a certain period. A win-win situation with B&R's mobile automation solution B&R's modular X90 control and I/O system offer the perfect hardware platform. The system's heart is the X90 controller with a powerful ARM processor and up to 48 multifunction I/O channels. The modular controller can be equipped with optional I/Os, interfaces, or circuit boards – such as the one for condition monitoring. B&R’s mapp components are quick to configure and communicate with each other automatically – reducing the amount of actual programming to a minimum. This results in a very high-performance system that monitors machine health and informs operators in time to act. Since the X90 controller can be connected to existing CAN architectures, it is easy to equip an existing fleet with condition monitoring. It becomes possible to move step-by-step toward a modern real-time bus system that can handle the volume of data being generated by today's machines. Conventional strategies for preventing the unexpected failure of mining excavators are costly and resource intensive. With B&R’s X90 system and condition monitoring technology, both manufacturers and operators of mobile equipment can generate added value with solutions that make them more reliable.