Siemens (www.Siemens.com) hosts Virtual Smart Mining Forum to explore new trends and the impact of technology on the mining sector; Launch of a Hackathon to universities to participate using the low-coding platform, Mendix; Siemens hosts an Enterprise and Supplier Development forum to promote sustainability and skills development in mining.

With its motto, “On the road to the digital future”, Siemens will be hosting its virtual Smart Mining forum from the 3^rd to the 5^th of August 2021. This is an insightful, strategic event that explores the impact of technology and how it can sustainably drive transformation within the African Mining Industry.

The Smart Mining Forum is supported by key industry leaders, including Sietse van der Woude, Head of Modernisation & Safety and Sustainable development, Minerals Council of South Africa), Andrew Lane: Leader: Deloitte Africa and Ian Gebbie, Vice President, Electrical Control & Instrument Engineering, DRA.

The forum will bring together the mining community, industry experts, decision-makers, thought leaders, technology providers, consumers, users, engineers and designers to discuss topics affecting the mining industry and they will explore ways in which technology can drive effective change in the sector.

“Covid-19 has prevented the industry from having progressive conversations about how to move the mining sector forward. This 3-day event is an opportunity for us to bring the mining community together to reignite the dialogue and share knowledge to help us sustainably transform the future of mining in Africa,” says Tim Walwyn - Head of Mineral Solutions, Siemens Southern and Eastern Africa. As a partner to African mines, our electrification, automation & digitalization portfolio offers a combination of deep understanding of the mining industry with state-of-the-art technologies.”

This virtual event provides an interactive platform in which attendees have an opportunity to explore the Siemens virtual showroom, demonstrating the company’s end-to-end mining expertise, observe current and future industry trends, explore cutting-edge technologies, and participate in interactive sessions with our local and international technical experts and thought leaders, who will cover key topics across the digital mining value chain. During the forum, Siemens will also launch its SIDRIVEIQ, industrial IoT monitoring solution for drive systems.

Sabine Dall’Omo, Siemens CEO for Southern and Eastern Africa says “Our main objective with this event was to initiate a forum for knowledge transfer to the industry and raise awareness of the opportunities created by technology. We’re excited to bring this collaborative forum, where we can showcase the latest technological innovations for the industry and explore their effects on the African mining landscape.”

Siemens has invited various South African universities and will introduce them to Mendix, a low-code rapid application development platform. Mendix is a high productivity application development platform that enables users to build and continuously improve mobile and web applications at scale. The Mendix Platform is designed to accelerate enterprise app delivery across the entire application development lifecycle, from ideation to deployment and operations.

During the forum, Siemens will launch a hackathon using the Mendix platform. The company will demonstrate the platform to the universities. The universities will use Mendix to create an app to build a mining use-case. Later this year, Siemens will host a competition to determine the winning university based on their use-case.

As part of the company’s commitment to Enterprise and Supplier Development, Siemens will also provide ten industrious Small Medium and Micro Enterprises (SMME’s) that deliver solutions and services to the mining industry a chance to showcase their companies and expertise in a separate virtual showroom.

“Our goal with the Enterprise and Supplier Development portion of this event is to explore innovative offerings developed by local enterprises and bring their ideas and solutions closer to potential clients, who could possibly assist to further develop these offerings into value-adding products, applications and services for the industry. We wanted to make these businesses visible to industry leaders.” Rita Nkuhlu, Siemens Executive Director.

The participating SMME’s will obtain SITRAIN access, an online, flexible, continuous, and personalized digital learning platform for industry that’s available anytime, anywhere, and can be used on any device, such as via a mobile app. Its modular structure divides the content into easy-to-follow “learning nuggets” and includes checkpoints to monitor achievements.

“The future of mining and the transformation of the mining industry depends highly on staying abreast of advancing technology and industry trends. It also depends on the sustainable development of new enterprises, collaborations, and ongoing conversations among relevant stakeholders in the public and private sector and educational institutions. Now is the time to contribute to small business growth, promote job creation and develop critical job skills required for the transformation in the mining industry”. ends Sabine.