Forbes Asia - June 2018

JUNE 2018 FORBES ASIA | 23

radar controls and Wi-Fi systems that will provide the data

to control every aspect of work in the Koodaiderie and South

Flank mines—all the way through to rail transport and the

inal stage of ship loading.

In early April at the launch of a joint venture with educa-

tion authorities in Western Australia to train workers in

automated systems, Chris Salisbury, chief executive of Rio

Tinto Iron Ore, said that his company’s computer-controlled

railway was “already the biggest robot in the world.”

But if Salisbury is in charge of a business that produced

330 million tons of iron ore last calendar year, worth $11.5

billion, then Kellie Parker, the managing director of iron ore

planning, is who’s got to deliver tomorrow’s loads. She’s in

charge of designing and delivering Koodaiderie, Rio Tinto’s

irst intelligent mine.

Parker, a 17-year veteran with Rio Tinto, likens the new

technology to how “machine learning” is absorbing processes

in various industries and continually improving on that work.

It also can give an Asian steel-mill client a peek at supply.

“he opportunity to look at your ore body, know what’s

down-hole and how you can model that, mine it, and reine

the data, means you can bring your [minerals] customer

closer to your ore body,” she says.

At BHP her opposite number overseeing the planning

and design of South Flank is Diane Jurgens, the com-

pany’s chief tech-

nology officer, who

joined the mining

giant in 2015 after a

career in informa-

tion technology and

business development

with Boeing, General

Motors and Shanghai

OnStar Telematics

in China (telematics

being an essential in driverless cars).

One of the early technologies being tested by BHP under

the guidance of Jurgens, 55, is a cap that measures an equip-

ment driver’s brain waves to look for signs of fatigue. She

says the sensors can inform the driver, “but just as impor-

tantly, it’s integrated with our back oice and supervisors can

intervene.”

Mining has never been an industry which welcomed

women despite its patron saint being Saint Barbara, who

BHP Chief Technology

Oicer Diane Jurgens is

using biometric sensors

for workers; recent ad

highlights BHP’s tech.

CARLA GOTTGENS/BLOOMBERG (TOP)