On October 25 and 26, Dassault Systèmes attended the Institute of Quarrying Malaysia CONEX conference organized with the support of the Department of Mineral & Geoscience Malaysia (DMG).
Held in Putrajaya, Malaysia, CONEX was attended by approximately 500 like-minded industry experts from about 50 companies consisting of private, government, universities and technology suppliers. The theme of this year’s conference was “Global Partnerships in Quarrying”, which is the resourceful means to create strategic international affiliations with all working collectively towards business, technological and productivity enhancements in the quarrying industry worldwide.
I attended the conference with Craig Bradley, Principal Consultant GEOVIA, who presented a paper titled “Optimized Tactical Scheduling for Profitable Quarrying”.
In line with the conference theme of global partnerships, Dassault Systèmes aims to take a partnership approach to the Quarry industry in Malaysia by working closely with Quarry Operators to create robust and practical mine plans to meet production and business objectives.
“Over the past 20 years, the Dassault Systèmes team through the GEOVIA brand, has been engaged in the Quarry industry across Malaysia. In this region, through the increasing utilization of mining software in industrial minerals operations, Quarry Operators have demonstrated success in the use of mining software tools to create solutions that deliver the abovementioned robust and practical mine plans,” said Craig Bradley.
The Malaysian Quarry Industry & Technology
What I found interesting was the warm and welcoming atmosphere. The Malaysian quarry industry was not spared in the downturn of commodity prices, yet there was an obvious stability and calm that comes from having a long-term view. There was also a sense of awareness that the general development of the country has depended on the success of the quarry industry.
In terms of technologies in the mining industry, attendees also heard from Dato Professor Eric Goh from University Sains Malaysia (USM). His presentation introduced new and innovative applications to stretch the current marketability of quarry products (mainly consumed as construction material).
Eric also discussed future technology adoption like wireless sensors, in-shift monitoring, cloud-based collaboration, 3D visualization and virtual reality for training and access – all of which are already commercially provided in the Dassault Systèmes portfolio.
Like other commodities, the quarry sector is faced with political, economic and production constraints. However, one theme that resonated among many quarry operators is that they would like to improve and enhance their operations and environmental commitments with investment in technology. In particular, by adopting new methods and processes as well as considering joint operations to achieve the necessary scale of operations to maximize investments in innovation.
You can download Craig Bradley’s paper on Optimized Tactical Scheduling for Profitable Quarrying here.