Sibanye Stillwater: Mining & Smelting Innovation

00:10
Speaker 1
So, typically, how we do it is we give a little bit of context around the project, some of the initial requirements, some of the challenges faced, and then naturally the results. And then the most exciting part is usually the visuals. People love visuals. Such an important part of aspect of every project. And then this year we introduced a little bit of video just to give you a sense of the flow inside of the application and what that looks like. So we’ll kick it off with the introduction and I don’t know, Jacques, we start on that side and work it down. Introduce yourself the business and we’ll give these gents a chance. Okay, 100%. Thanks, Jacques. 

00:49
Speaker 2
Yeah. So I’m Jacques Venter, engineer at Concera. That’s recently been three years old, and yeah, glad to be here on stage today and showcase the project that we did for Sibanye. Thank you so much.

01:04
Speaker 3
Perfect.

01:06
Speaker 2
Yeah.

01:07
Speaker 4
And I’m Sibusiso Masego, the unit manager for control and instrumentation at Sibanye-Stillwater. We’ve recently embarked on a journey of putting on Ignition, replacing some legacy systems at our rusting pack operations. Thank you.

01:28
Speaker 1
Fantastic.

01:29
Speaker 3
Yes, I’m Johan Louw.

01:32
Speaker 1
Does anybody not know Johan Louw? I’m just.

01:36
Speaker 3
Maybe from a previous product. I was. But yes, I’m part of the. I’m a technical specialist at Sibanye-Stillwater. So this was quite an exciting journey. You know, as Sibusiso said, you know, I see it as a journey into the future. We are on the ship, and I don’t think we’re staying behind.

02:03
Speaker 1
Fantastic. Nice introduction. All right, so to give an overview of the, of the project, the requirements around. I know ASM or Abnormal Situation Management was a big aspect, a big part of it. Who wants to talk us through the overview?

02:21
Speaker 2
Okay, so yeah, so the big adoption there at Sibanye is to adopt the Abnormal Situation Management. They first had a project there in Marikana, where they got down to what type of standards they want to implement, and we use those standards, but we also wanted to see how we can actually enhance it and use it. So yeah, it’s the Abnormal Situation Management that was implemented. Like I said, it’s a grayscale type scalar, but it’s actually not the grayscale that makes you aware of abnormal situations. So it uses colour to draw attention to where it must be used, and that was what was used there. Yeah. So, and then the project was to. To replace the legacy type systems that they’ve got implemented there. That inherently has some problems, cybersecurity side problems as well as Scalability type problems. Security.

03:18
Speaker 1
Security was a big aspect for you guys, yeah, yes, yes, that’s correct. Yeah. Cool. You may want to speak to some of the challenges you had experienced before in terms of latency security?

03:32
Speaker 3
I want to. We actually went through a big thing last year, and because of that, I think security actually tightened up a lot, you know, on the ICT side.

03:42
Speaker 1
Yeah.

03:42
Speaker 3
So, you know, I think the legacy products probably battle a lot with increased cybersecurity, and even with those extreme measures, Ignition could easily be implemented. I must say, going forward. You know, since the project, we actually have gone forward to notifications on Telegram, we’ve got teams and then also we’ve got mobility, whereby our ICT team, even with these tough regulations, you know, allowed, because of the architecture of Ignition, actually allowed us to take that web interface, you know, to the outside, which was not really allowed in the past. So it was very much in line with the stricter security measures that were implemented.

04:33
Speaker 1
Okay, so the requirements outside of ASM, the requirements, some of the other requirements that you’ve noted here, Jacques, any. Anything specific you want to go through?

04:47
Speaker 2
Well, okay, so I mean offhand they wanted an interface that’s easy to use, easy to adopt by operators as well as technical personnel. It had to, at a glance, you must be, like I said with the ASM, immediately be able to identify where a fault is happening. Yeah, it was the cybersecurity that was the issue. And I mean with the Ignition platform having some of the, well, it’s world-leading cyber security adoption that it has in place, and I mean we could leverage that together with their current IT strategies and policies that they have in place. Yeah, it was just actually nice to see how everything there comes together.

05:39
Speaker 1
Okay. And do you want to speak to the project timelines at all? October 2024 to December. Is that a typo?

05:45
Speaker 2
Yeah, it’s actually a little bit of PTSD, so I prefer not to.

05:52
Speaker 3
I thought it was a typo, but.

05:56
Speaker 2
But yes. Yeah, it’s three months, it’s three shafts, 10 compressors. It’s all the templates, the whole architecture. Yeah, we had, were forced to be able. Or were forced to finish that before the end of December, even though commissioning still happened this year. But we had to finish all of the templates, all of the development. It was due to their financial constraints or their capital constraints at that.

06:21
Speaker 1
Amazing. So you missed a Christmas with your family.

06:24
Speaker 3
Yeah.

06:28
Speaker 1
All right. I think the obvious challenge there is the Timelines based on the three months. Some of the underlying infrastructure, obviously, there were different types of hardware involved, different types of machinery involved. So different standards essentially that you had to create, but still standards that are universal and repeatable.

06:51
Speaker 2
Yes, 100%. I have to say offhand, what helped a lot is that they’ve got very good standards implemented in their PLCs. So I mean, we could leverage that to build decent UDTs that fit onto that and which also makes them very easy to implement in the future if they have to. If they have to scale going forward or implement something new.

07:15
Speaker 1
Okay, Johan Sibu, do you want to speak about some of the results? So ASM was a requirement. Now you have a high-performance ASM. What does that look like from a day-to-day point of view in terms of use as well as maintenance?

07:31
Speaker 4
Yeah, the user friendliness, I think it’s one of the goals that we are currently achieving. You know, the operators work way, way better on the system. It’s easy for them to see, you know, what’s going on. And I mean it also has a psychological factor associated with when you see colour, something is wrong. And then you are able to address that. And then, other than the abnormal situation management challenge that we actually have addressed, it’s for our compressor houses, which are located at remote locations. So the bigger challenge was network outages, where now we lose sight of the compressor, and we even lose control. So the Ignition architecture has solved that problem for us by deploying edge gateways at local compressor houses with the ability for temporary buffering.

08:43
Speaker 4
And then as soon as network outages have been restored, synchronisation happens, and we still get the data as if nothing happened.

08:52
Speaker 1
Okay. Makes your life a little bit easier from a support point of view.

08:59
Speaker 3
Most definitely.

09:00
Speaker 1
Okay, so this is the architecture. It may be, perhaps it seems a little bit overwhelming at first, but. Jacques, you want to talk us through the architecture?

09:11
Speaker 2
Yeah. Okay, so hub and spoke type model on the right-hand corner, you can definitely. You can see that they’ve got, on the IT side of the firewall, they’ve got what they call the IT hub. So everything is aggregated into that system, that is basically exposed to the Internet, where they’ve got access via mobile or via office to the different SCADA systems. As you can later see in some of the videos that are playing, that’s typically where they will open up a map displaying all of the different gateways. They can see the gateway health. You can click on that Then you can go to the different SCADA systems. The SCADA systems that you’ll see on the other side of the firewall are then segregated onto the three shafts as well as the services. On the services section.

10:03
Speaker 2
Yeah, that’s your 10 compressors that are connecting to the edge gateways, that’re out in the fields. And you will also see that they’ve implemented a fully redundant system.

10:16
Speaker 1
Okay, do you want to talk through these?

10:27
Speaker 2
Yes.

10:27
Speaker 3
So basically this is the. You actually do see some colour here. As you know, I think if you want a big challenge, you install a new skater within three months. But then, if you want to make it really hard, you go for a grayscale or an ASM scaler because you know your legacy or your operators don’t adopt that in the flash. So you know the colour that you see on those previous screens, you acted in an attempt to actually get them. You see the similarities. You know, it’s you that’s the type of, let’s call it, candy that we put in to get the people to start using this system. You know, from an operator side, it’s still a scale. They don’t know whether it’s running on a web or what’s on the back end. Correct.

11:18
Speaker 3
So we need it, we sort of push rollout through that and something.

11:23
Speaker 1
It’s still a little bit familiar. Not exactly, not too unfamiliar.

11:27
Speaker 3
And the thing is, the moment you get by, you can actually go complete grayscale because then they would realise in this structure the value that you actually get, there’s physically no pop-ups. The moment something goes wrong, you get a highlight on this screen. Now there are no alarms going, but when you see colour, you will probably see some around the device, something up and in the tree view, you will also see these little alarms that will sort of breadcrumb you all the way to the particular screen. And you will, I mean, if you actually don’t even train an operator, you would probably be able to guide him, and you would ask him where you think the problem is? And he would actually just scroll through those, let’s call it breadcrumbs. That’s the best way of doing it.

12:17
Speaker 3
And then he will get to the screen, and then you ask him on the screen What do you think is wrong? And then he would actually revert to the item that’s basically flashing. So yeah, there’s definitely the value. And the moment they realise that value, I think that’s when you can remove the other pieces of candy that you use for the wine.

12:35
Speaker 1
Yeah, yeah. And. And the breadcrumb. Two interesting kinds of design aspects. The breadcrumb. Breadcrumb following system as well as the placeholder, the. The ability to select a tag and add it is available on every screen. Was that an initial requirement or something cool that you guys just wanted to put into the application?

12:54
Speaker 2
Yeah, that was our flavour that we put into the menu system there on the left-hand side. Yes.

13:00
Speaker 1
Okay, do you want to maybe explain that?

13:02
Speaker 3
Sorry, can I maybe add something quick? What you guys see on the screen now, that framework that you see with the layout at the bottom, that framework is actually quite an achievement that Concera built for us. You know, if we actually go to any other site, we can implement this framework and any other; you wouldn’t even know the look and feel would be identical because that framework is stuck there. The alarm configuration is set, and security is already built into it. So what you see will be similar looking on any of the other sides. And I think it’s basically having that frame. That framework is quite important because the framework we’ve already fatted is to our standard. So any new projects will be inside this framework, and it will actually very much comply with our standard.

13:53
Speaker 1
And that obviously aids scalability.

13:57
Speaker 3
Obviously. Obviously, yeah.

14:00
Speaker 4
Maybe another thing that I can add, we’ve actually tried the same framework on other SCADA packages. It worked, but I think with Ignition, it was even easier and better to implement. So that’s another thing that we’ve observed, comparing it with other competitors.

14:22
Speaker 1
Okay, so the ease of use, you mean?

14:24
Speaker 4
Yes, that’s correct.

14:26
Speaker 1
Okay, perfect.

14:27
Speaker 2
So, something that I just want to draw focus to. So I mean immediately when you saw the compressor overview page, ASM segregated into different levels, your level 1, 2, 3, 4, level 1 being a high level, overview being your one page that you should be able to monitor your whole site from just that page and be able to see if your site is healthy without delving into lower levels. But like, but I mean, so you’ve got your level one page, which shows everything. If an alarm occurs, you can immediately see it on the left top being activated according to the criticality. If it’s a critical, a medium, or a low type of alarm, like they said in the menu structure, you can see the breadcrumb.

15:09
Speaker 2
From there, you open up the view, which is called the level 2 screen, level 2 and level 3 screen based on your S95 type structure. And you’ll also notice that there are no pop-ups anywhere. As soon as you choose something specific, your face plates will open up at the bottom, providing context for that specific piece of equipment. So while still maintaining a total view of your operation as is at that specific moment.

15:37
Speaker 1
Very nice. Very, very nice. That’s a long video. Was it everything or not?

15:49
Speaker 2
Yeah, I just delved through a few of the screens and didn’t realise it.

15:54
Speaker 1
It was unclear if it was leaping or still continuing on. Cool. In terms of challenges, we spoke about the challenges, lessons learned. I know there were a few for you guys. It was your first ASM project on Ignition, so there were some. Maybe we can start it off with you guys. And then from your perspective in terms of the human change management and getting people along and around the adoption, there were some lessons learned there as well. But for you guys, from a technical build point of view, any lessons learned?

16:23
Speaker 2
So definitely. Yeah, there’s. There’s actually quite a lot. But so there were good implementations from the beginning, where we segregated projects, where we’ve got a specific project just for ASM type standards, specific projects just for PLC standards that inherit everything. And then you go down to your. The base projects itself, and that’s already a way to maintain your standard and a single source of standard, a single source of the truth for how you want to move forward, which you can then use to implement. Like I said, if you want to go on using that into future applications. But while building that, of course, there were a lot of lessons that we had to learn how to do things more efficiently.

17:08
Speaker 2
Like, if you can try and stay away from doing less coding interviews, do it more in the tag provider, doing back-end type stuff instead of front-end type stuff. There were also lessons learned, of course, with, how can I say, the whole infrastructure implementing the edges, syncing it up to the gateway. The different gateways community communicating to each other, and while busy doing this, sounds like a cliche, but it’s just how awesome the product is while you’re working with it. The capability that you have, the flexibility, the ease of use.

17:50
Speaker 3
Yeah, okay, perfect. Now I want to just add that this is really what we realize is it’s a true platform in the sense that when we wanted data that was on sites that was not yet where the project wasn’t running and we needed data, so we just placed a gateway, create a gateway network and you just move the tag provider to this side, you know, with the remote tag provider, and it’s as if those tags are current. So people watching this don’t even know that this tag is coming from a different site and that actually and as I said, the fact that there’s only one port involved, you know, for it to open one port, they never had one issue with us opening communication between gateways and we’ve got a quite a wide network and it was just quite simple to roll out.

18:46
Speaker 3
As he says, it’s quite impressive.

18:50
Speaker 1
What your architecture was also built in such a way that it allows for that safe single connection. There was, there was a fundamental design aspect of it. Yeah. Fantastic.

19:01
Speaker 2
I have to say one thing about the architecture, which is really a game-changer. Even though, yeah, it was released in 2015 or so. But EAM, the EAM module, just makes the management of this whole system so easy. Moving the projects around, developing in the right type of space, and it’s already populated at the different sites where it needs to be. Yeah. As well as to make sure that specific projects, like I mentioned previously, are maintained. If somebody goes in fiddles, it’s going to be moved down there again.

19:34
Speaker 1
Yeah.

19:34
Speaker 2
And you’re going to make sure that your standards are always maintained.

19:37
Speaker 1
So EM is the enterprise administration module, which allows for the management of your multiple gateways. We had a similar one in Cape Town; we had a similar architecture with Mediclinic. So Mediclinic, currently 50 facilities, they’ll. They’ll be pushing that out to over 200 facilities eventually. Easy with two or three gateways. I think Kevin mentioned that this morning. When you get to the numbers of 50, 100, 200, the ability to do that without actually touching those remote gateways or edge gateways, that’s. That’s pretty important. Yeah.

20:11
Speaker 3
I must say that it will definitely add value. It was like when they mentioned it’s a. That’s exactly what we need because we’re going to, I think, grow to quite a few gateways going forward.

20:22
Speaker 1
Yeah, for sure. So super. This was a decision support kind of ASM-type system. What are you guys currently working on? What’s next for the application? This application or another application?

20:37
Speaker 2
Yeah.

20:37
Speaker 4
What we’re working on, which Johan and I are still busy with, is the local security. It’s one of the developments because we’ve realised that with the AD security through ICT authentication, we started having challenges, and then we are now currently using local security, which makes it even easier and more resilient. And then another thing that I can say, which is a game changer on a business perspective, is the web services Being able to open your SCADA on your phone or any other device that has web services, that’s a huge game changer. If I compare it with other SCADA systems that we have, where for us to achieve multiple viewing or multiple clients, we need to buy licenses, expensive licenses, you know, but with this, I mean the View only web services works very well for the guys, you know, at the top.

21:49
Speaker 4
I mean, the managers and the engineers, you know, and only give control to the operators. So that’s also a game-changer for us from a business perspective.

22:00
Speaker 1
Yeah, fantastic. Any closing thoughts while we’re all looking at these amazing screens, which I realise now is not in the loop. Sorry about that. Any closing thoughts for you guys? Johan, Sibu.

22:17
Speaker 3
Obviously, I think for people who think about going to Ignition, I mean, you know, for the, I think for your senior people, the costs will motivate them. And I said during the break to somebody that I think the 80% of the thing, let’s call it, this product is cool. And the 80%, what is cool is for the developer, I think we like skater nerds, it’s like becoming excited about something. And the development side, it’s fantastic, you know, on the operation side and obviously the add ons and the nice stuff that you can add on top to provide more value to the, I prefer to the decision makers, you can bring the data, the system allows you to bring the necessary data to the decision makers, I think more efficiently on your phone, on your teams.

23:17
Speaker 3
I think a lot of people are now working from home on Teams. So if any crucial events come through on teams, they see it, they’re aware of things. So people are, it’s like, you know, social media people know about things before they almost happen. So I mean, and that’s what is expected. I mean, that’s the times in which we live. If you can’t get to that, then obviously you’re behind.

23:37
Speaker 1
Yeah, timely information.

23:39
Speaker 3
Yeah, exactly. Yeah.

23:41
Speaker 4
We actually keep discovering features like Johan says. Now we are able to link it with Teams, and for any, maybe alarms or any events, you can trigger that on Teams and then you get that. And then whilst we were working with Concera, we also came up with a great idea for operators to put a link or a button there for training. So there are training videos that Concera has developed for us. All those videos reside in the server. Then whenever the operator has some time, he clicks on that button, he watches those videos for training, you know, because this is still a new standard throughout the business. So part of the change management process is to train the operators, you know, to be well-equipped to use the product.

24:32
Speaker 1
Very good. From an adoption point of view.

24:35
Speaker 4
Yeah.

24:35
Speaker 1
Because you don’t just want people to adopt it, you want them to also be excited about it. Yes. Yeah. Fantastic. Very good idea, that. I like that. Yeah.

24:43
Speaker 2
Yeah. Then just from my side, working with SA and the team that they have, they’ve got a very high skill level and yeah, the. The types of ideas that come forth every single day are always challenging. I have to end often with what you want to end the video. If you can dream it, you can do it, or you can build it. And that’s something that I’ve really seen when they come up with these new challenges or new ideas. And yeah, you sit and think for a while, you go into Ignition, and you definitely find a way to do it.

25:16
Speaker 3
Whatever.

25:17
Speaker 2
Whatever’s needed.

25:19
Speaker 1
It’s got to pull the handbrake, manage those ideas. Especially when people start sending through requests. No, Fantastic. I think it’s a beautiful application visually, but I believe functionally, you’ve done an amazing job. Jacques and team to build those functional aspects in. Yeah, very well done.