Challenge

In the mining industry, the ability to quickly respond to process changes is essential. One minor process change can negatively affect resource extraction and cause expensive periods of downtime. To help manage their complex operations, mining companies rely on supervisory control and data acquisition (SCADA) systems to oversee their industrial processes locally or at remote locations; however, these systems are oftentimes outdated which cause operational challenges. This was the case for a mining company focused on gold recovery who needed to upgrade their legacy SCADA system for enhanced control capabilities across multiple locations. E Tech Group was engaged to support their mining operations by upgrading their outdated SCADA system.

Solution

The gold-mining company needed to efficiently monitor and control its assets across multiple remote locations. The E Tech Group team strategized project deployment considerations with various stakeholders at the gold-mining company to maximize the customer’s efficiency and data acquisition efforts with the new SCADA system. E Tech Group applied their Solution Experts Business approach and staffed the project with control engineers specialized in SCADA solutions for a smooth deployment process.

The customer chose Ignition, an industrial application platform from Inductive Automation, to standardize their SCADA architecture due to its scalability and intuitive design features. As a Premier Ignition System Integrator, E Tech Group applied their expertise in Ignition implementation to streamline the migration process and enhance the company’s ability to make quick process decisions with real-time data reporting.

Results

Within a few short months, the E Tech Group team successfully supported the gold mining company’s migration to a new SCADA system. “For many companies, implementing the right SCADA system can save significant money, time, and process headaches. The peace of mind that SCADA provides from its remote visibility and asset control benefits is priceless and supports more real-time, data-driven production decisions”, says Pedro Bertoni, E Tech Group Project Manager about the advantages of SCADA systems.

E Tech Group is continuing to support the gold-mining company with upgrades to their programable logic controllers as well as data acquisition enhancements from remote panels.