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The total active installed base of connected mining solutions reached almost 0.6 million units in the equipment, people and environment segments in 2018...

The equipment segment accounts for the largest share of the total, representing connected units deployed on machines and vehicles used in mining operations, according to new research from Berg Insight. This includes solutions ranging from OEM telematics systems on mining equipment to advanced connected solutions supplied by mining technology specialists.

The people segment includes various solutions deployed to support the safety and productivity of mining personnel, while the environment segment consists of sensor technology implemented for environmental monitoring of the mine itself. Growing at a compound annual growth rate of 15.5 percent, the total installed base of connected mining solutions in all these segments is forecasted to reach close to 1.2 million units in 2023. 

The top players active in the connected mining space include strikingly different types of companies, ranging from specialised independent technology suppliers of varying sizes up to the leading mining equipment manufacturers.

“Many of the key players today serve both surface and underground mining customers”, said Rickard Andersson, Principal Analyst, Berg Insight. The surface segment is dominated by Modular Mining Systems (owned by Komatsu), Hexagon Mining, Wenco International Mining Systems (owned by Hitachi Construction Machinery) and Caterpillar through its Cat MineStar suite. “Modular, Hexagon and Caterpillar all serve underground customers in addition to a primary presence in the surface segment, while Wenco is fully focused on surface mining”, continued Mr. Andersson. He adds that VIST Group is also active in the surface segment and serves some underground operations as well.

Examples of key technology providers focused specifically on underground applications are Newtrax Technologies (recently acquired by Sandvik) and Mobilaris (partially owned by Epiroc). The underground segment is in general less mature and more fragmented. “Mine Site Technologies, MICROMINE and rapidBizApps are additional players in the underground segment that all also serve surface customers to varying extents”, concluded Mr. Andersson. 

Totalmobile has been as the Office for National Statistics’ (ONS) provider of Fieldwork Management Solutions to help and support the 2021 Census of England, Wales and Northern Ireland.

After a robust assessment, selection and trial process, ONS has concluded that the Totalmobile solution - which will consist of a combination of mobile working and scheduling capabilities to mobile census field-workers - will join a team of suppliers in helping to deliver its most technologically and digitally advanced census to date.

This will be achieved by deploying Belfast-based Totalmobile’s optimised visit scheduling technologies, enabling staff to follow up with members of the public to ensure they have the support they need to complete the 2021 Census. The award of the ONS contract follows a long, detailed and highly successful trial of the Totalmobile solution undertaken in ONS’ Social Survey Division, where some 750 permanent staff have already adopted Totalmobile’s mobile working and scheduling solutions.

The decision to roll out a comparable technology offering to census field workers across England, Wales and Northern Ireland is not only testament to Totalmobile’s ability to deliver innovative solutions that provide transformational benefits, but also the ability to do so at significant scale. 

The contract award is the largest in Totalmobile’s history and comes on the back of a very successful Q1 2019 for the Company which saw software revenues and mobile deployments grow at record numbers; as well as the new acquisitions’ integration plans starting to be delivered.

Jim Darragh, CEO of Totalmobile comments: “What a great start we have had to 2019 and this announcement only goes to cement our position as the first-choice provider in the UK FSM market. We have been working hard with the ONS since early 2018, tasked with delivering a market-leading software solution for ONS’ Social Survey Division. We are delighted that this partnership will now be extended into such a vital programme like the 2021 Census, and demonstrates clearly the effectiveness, usability and scalability of our technology. We are all looking forward to working closely with the ONS on what is without doubt one of the largest mobile working projects the UK has seen.”

Ericsson has been selected by SoftBank Corp. (SoftBank) as a 5G vendor for the deployment of a multi-band 5G network in Japan following a series of successful joint proof-of-concept activities that began in 2015. 

Under the agreement, Ericsson will provide SoftBank with radio access network equipment, including products from the Ericsson Radio System portfolio. This will enable SoftBank to launch 5G services on their newly granted 3.9-4.0 GHz and 29.1-29.5 GHz bands for 5G New Radio (NR).

Ericsson will reinforce SoftBank’s existing LTE network while optimizing its 5G network. Ericsson Radio System products for this purpose will be deployed in several regions. With Ericsson Radio System, SoftBank can boost its spectrum assets.

Chris Houghton, Senior Vice President, Head of Market Area North East Asia, Ericsson, says: “SoftBank and Ericsson have been partners since the 2G era and we are thrilled to support them on this latest part of their technology journey. With the help of our advanced product portfolio, SoftBank can unlock the potential of 5G for Japanese society and we look forward to building on our long-standing partnership.”

Ericsson and SoftBank initiated joint proof-of-concept activities in 2015 and have successfully expanded their collaboration to include 5G testing of multi-bands, including 28 GHz and 4.5GHz. Both companies will continue to jointly explore 5G use cases, reinforce SoftBank’s existing LTE network while optimizing its 5G network and commit to realize 5G commercial services within this fiscal year 

Speedy Asset Services, the provider of tools, plant and specialist equipment, is adopting video telematics technology as standard on all new vehicles as part of the company’s commitment to road safety and fleet risk reduction. 

The company has installed VisionTrack’s VT2000 connected forward-facing camera on a further 50 recently acquired vans, which will provide Speedy Asset Services with added visibility of any collisions, near misses and harsh driving events.

“We have taken the decision to make video telematics part of our fleet replacement programme, with all new vehicles to be fitted with VisionTrack’s industry-leading road safety technology,” explains Gareth Jones, Road Risk Manager at Speedy Asset Services ltd. “The connected vehicle cameras will help target further improvements as part of our award-winning fleet safety strategy that has already reduced road collisions by 37 per cent, while also enabling us to avoid unnecessary insurance costs.”

The latest roll-out follows the successful adoption of a connected multi-camera DVR system on a fleet of HGVs. The solution has provided all around visibility of the vehicle and shares all captured information with VisionTrack’s cloud-based IoT platform. This has enabled Speedy Asset Services to view HD video evidence of road incidents within second of them occurring, as well as gain a better understanding of driver behaviour to identify areas of risk.

Speedy Asset Services had previously used a competitor SD-card vehicle camera solution within its fleet operation, but the devices required video to be manually downloaded before it could be viewed. It often took up to three weeks to receive footage from drivers, while the solution was also prone regular equipment failure. In contrast, the video telematics system provides real-time alerts in the event of a collision and access to footage, so Speedy Asset Services can immediately check on the welfare of the driver and prove liability in less than 30 minutes.

“As one of the first fleets in the UK to achieve DVSA earned recognition we have demonstrated our commitment to keeping our people, customers and members of public safe by meeting all driver and vehicle standards. As part of this, we understood the need for an advanced and scalable video telematics system that safeguards drivers, prevents road collisions and mitigates fleet risk. We are working closely with VisionTrack – a technology leader that is driving innovation in connected technology and smart transportation – to take advantage of their unrivalled ambition, expertise, service and support,” concludes Jones.

Simon Marsh, Managing Director of VisionTrack commented: “We combine the most advanced and reliable technology with first-class service and support to provide solutions that deliver true value. With a growing number of fleet and transport operations seeking innovative ways of protecting vehicles, drivers and brand reputation, we are now partner of choice for connected vehicle cameras and video telematics.”

EXCLUSIVE: Firm's cloud-based platform now managing 200,000,000 assets. 

ServiceMax has announced a new company milestone as 200 million assets are now under management on the company’s service execution management platform. 

 

While ERP and CRM systems are key to managing financial and sales data, a technician’s understanding of equipment in need of maintenance and repair is critical for successful service execution. Accurate equipment data is also essential in order to correctly dispatch the best technician for a given job, with the proper tools and needed parts. Unlike other field or asset service management solutions, ServiceMax’s purpose-built platform is designed to manage accurate data about complex equipment as-maintained, providing a reliable system of record for serviced equipment data. Technicians using the ServiceMax platform can depend on always having a reliable, historic record of service jobs, parts replaced and tools used for all previous jobs on a given machine or equipment part.

 

“Field Services are at the core of our strategy and mastering our installed base data is a key enabler to execute,” said Daniel Philippe, Vice President of Global Field Service Operations at Schneider Electric. “Our customers expect us to provide the best services and support. By leveraging ServiceMax as a system of record for the installed base, we can better understand our business, the market dynamics, where the installed base is, and deliver excellent, consistent service across the globe.”

 

“The more sophisticated the equipment, the more service planners, dispatchers, and technicians depend on accurate data for each piece of serviced equipment,” said Amit Jain, Senior Vice President of Product at ServiceMax. “With ServiceMax, service organizations have the ability to capture and update accurate equipment as maintained data. This asset visibility is not available in other enterprise applications and is critical to digital service transformation.”

 

“Getting to a state of consistent master data is a struggle for most organizations,” said Kevin Prouty, Group Vice President for IDC Energy and Manufacturing Insights. “Organizations need a solution that can scale from a few dozen devices to hundreds of thousands of assets. Effectively implementing a system of record puts assets under management to greater use and improves the company’s bottom line.”

 

Having a system of record of your equipment data as maintained in the field is key for organizations wanting to move from break-fix, to proactive and eventually predictive service. Since implementing ServiceMax as the system of record for accurate installed base data, ServiceMax customers have, on average, reduced mean time to repair by 13%, increased first time fix rates by 15%, and improved equipment uptime by 12%.

Zinier’s Intelligent Service Automation and Control (ISAC) Uses Machine Learning to Help Field Service Organizations Optimize their Operations and Scale More Efficiently. 

Zinier has announced Intelligent Service Automation and Control (ISAC), an AI-driven platform enabling field service organizations to operate more efficiently. Through its machine learning and analytics capabilities, ISAC helps organizations optimize every aspect of their field service operations, resulting in the highest levels of automation-driven outcomes.

As the volume and complexity of field service requests continue to rise, field service organizations are looking for ways to drive efficiency and lay the groundwork for continued growth. At the same time, technology trends such as 5G in telecom and a sharp increase in the number of IoT-connected devices are creating a flood of new data streams, forcing organizations to move away from manual methods of collecting, analyzing, and acting on data.

Zinier’s ISAC platform uses machine learning to analyze data and provide real-time insights, driving productivity and enabling customers to inject automation into every step of the service delivery chain. By comparing a constant flow of field data against historical trends, ISAC is able to recommend the best course of action at any given time. And with a flexible, open architecture, customers can easily apply AI to specific use cases, whether it’s scanning a closeout package for anomalies or recommending a stock transfer by predicting parts required for a work order and an individual technician’s parts on-hand.

“After reviewing a number of solutions, we determined that Zinier was the only one that met all our requirements for flexibility and end-to-end automation,” said Luis Miguel Diaz Ortiz, Head of Telecom & Technology, Mexico at NCR Corporation. “ISAC's AI and automation capabilities will help us manage infrastructure and work more proactively. We consider it a terrific investment in providing better service.”

With ISAC as the foundation, field service organizations can easily build AI solutions for the use cases most important to them. All they need to do is determine the scope, criteria, and threshold for AI recommendations, and ISAC will take it from there.

“Most companies are looking for ways to drive automation and turn data into actionable insights, but execution remains a challenge,” said Arka Dhar, co-founder and CEO of Zinier. “With ISAC, we’re helping our customers fully embrace automation by giving them a highly configurable tool that can be applied to their specific needs, driving efficiency and providing recommendations based on real-time data and user feedback.”

Key features/benefits of ISAC include:

• Flexible, Configurable Platform: Unlike legacy solutions that can take months to update, ISAC was designed with flexibility and scalability in mind. Instead of being limited to a few use cases, customers can easily configure the features to apply AI to their operations by defining criteria and letting ISAC evaluate data accordingly.
• Real-Time AI Recommendations: ISAC is constantly running in the background, observing user actions and providing recommendations. In some cases, ISAC will immediately implement a recommendation once it has been accepted by the user. In other cases, it will suggest a course of action for a back-office coordinator or field technician.
• Seamless Integrations: Organizations can easily connect all of their critical systems using Zinier’s set of APIs and integrations, ensuring that all relevant information is factored into each recommendation and insight.

Location and mobile technology company, Localz, have been announced as the latest software partner for Castleton Technology Plc. benefiting housing associations within the tech firm's portfolio.

Housing Associations within the Castleton portfolio will gain insight to their operations and new service transparency to their customers through Localz location technology ‘Find My Engineer’, which tracks an engineer's journey to a job, viewed by the customer.

Ian Stewart, Commercial Sales Manager for Castleton commented: “With an industry average of 20% failed appointments and each failed appointment costing up to £100, it is business critical for Housing Authorities to reduce the time wasted and costs incurred associated with these failed appointments to improve services for social housing customers. Our partnership with Localz will help our customers achieve this objective”.

The ‘Find my Engineer’ solution provides the ultimate transparency by giving customers access to real-time location tracking when the operative is en route. Accurate ETAs are provided, which take live traffic conditions into account. Localz own research shows that 65% of consumers say that viewing their service provider’s ETA is the most important feature on a service provider’s mobile app.

Localz client portfolio includes the largest UK energy provider, British Gas, who achieved a 17% increase in the first-time access rate of their engineers through Localz platform.  

“Localz’s exciting new partnership with Castleton demonstrates their continued drive to innovate in the social housing sector. The integration of our “On my way” technology into their leading housing management solutions, provides not only increased productivity savings for their customers but a great customer experience for the tenants also," said Charles Bullock, Partnership Director, Localz.

British Safety Council’s report makes the case for urgent action on the impact of air pollution on outdoor workers.

The British Safety Council has launched a report Impact of air pollution on the health of outdoor workers which provides compelling evidence to recognize ambient air pollution as an occupational health hazard in Britain. In the report, the charity presents the demands that spearhead its campaign to limit the dangers of air pollution to the health of outdoor workers.

Air pollution, linked with up to 36,000 early deaths a year in the UK, is considered the biggest environmental risk to public health. Research from King’s College London suggests that more than 9,400 people die prematurely due to poor air quality in London alone. Ambient air pollution is linked to cancer, lung and heart disease, type-2 diabetes, infertility and early dementia.

Several pilot schemes are beginning to monitor and measure the levels of air pollution experienced by people working and living in London. Their findings will be instrumental in developing recommendations for reducing people’s exposure to air pollution in the capital.  

However, at the same time, the government and regulatory bodies such as the Health and Safety Executive (HSE), continue to demonstrate a lack of interest in relation to regulation and guidance on air pollution.  

In March 2019, the British Safety Council launched its Time to Breathe campaign, which is focused on the protection of outdoor workers from air pollution. The cornerstone of the campaign is Canairy, the first mobile app that gives outdoor workers and their employers insights into pollution and how to reduce staff exposure to it. It has been created in co-operation with King’s College London. Canairy draws on the London Air Quality Network (LAQN) pollution map at King’s and the worker’s GPS to calculate an individual’s exposure to pollution on an hourly basis.  

The British Safety Council’s report Impact of air pollution on the health of outdoor workers is the next step in the campaign. It gathers available evidence about the causes and consequences of air pollution in Britain. It also reviews international examples of initiatives set up to measure air pollution in different locations and their recommendations for risk reduction.

In the report the British Safety Council is calling for:

1. The UK to adopt the World Health Organisation’s exposure limits for the main pollutants;
2. Government action to ensure ambient air pollution is treated as an occupational health issue and adopt a Workplace Exposure Limit for Diesel Engine Exhaust Emissions (DEEE);
3. Improvements to pollution monitoring across the UK, so that all regions can have the same accuracy in emissions data as London;
4. Recognition that protection from the dangers of air pollution should be enshrined in law as a human right.

Lawrence Waterman, Chairman of the British Safety Council, said: “The impact of air pollution on people working in large cities is starting to be recognised as a major public health risk. However, we are yet to see any true commitment to addressing this issue by the government and the regulators.

“The Time to Breathe campaign, together with our recent report, is a call to action for policymakers, regulators and industry leaders. The social and economic implications of ambient air pollution are clear. It must be recognised as an occupational health hazard, much like some toxic substances such as asbestos. Breathing clean air is not a privilege but a basic human right for the thousands of people who are undertaking vital work outdoors.”

Pegasystems study shows huge disconnect between business decision makers and customers when it comes to customer service perceptions.

Businesses are out of touch with their customers and overestimate the quality of the customer service they provide, according to new research from Pegasystems Inc. the software company empowering digital transformation at the world’s leading enterprises.

Research firm Savanta surveyed 12,500 global customers, businesses executives, and customer-facing employees for a one-of-a-kind, three-dimensional perspective on the state of customer service today. The research identified key customer service frustrations and revealed that many businesses don’t know their customers well enough to provide the level of service their customers want.

It also found that many organizations aren’t fully committed to providing the level of service they aspire to and run the risk of losing customers to competitors as a result. The good news? Customers, employees, and business leaders all agree on what matters most, so a clear roadmap exists.

Key findings of the study include:
• Business decision makers are out of touch:
Four times the percentage business leaders (40 percent) as customers (10 percent) rate the current standard of customer service as ‘excellent,’ while only 23 percent of customer-facing staff rate their organization’s service the same way. Similarly, an overwhelming 89 percent of decision makers and 73 percent of employees feel their organization provides an overall positive level of customer service, but only 54 percent of customers feel the same way. In addition, 71 percent of business leaders think they provide better customer service than their competitors – a number that is mathematically impossible to achieve.

• Are businesses really committed to providing good customer service?
While 81 percent of business decision makers consider customer service as either their main or key competitive differentiator, 33 percent of customer-facing employees say they face no consequences for providing bad customer service. Meanwhile, 48 percent of customer-facing employees say they face barriers to providing good service.

• Poor service is driving customers mad:
88 percent of customer-facing employees say that customer service is a priority within their business, but the customers tell a different story. Only 11 percent of consumers say contacting customer service is an enjoyable experience. Of those who are dissatisfied, 63 percent would rather clean the toilet than contact a customer service team. Only 10 percent say their typical customer service experience is ‘excellent.’

• Customers feel like organizations don’t know them well enough:
Despite 87 percent of business decision makers believing they know their customers well, the vast majority of consumers feel differently. Just 23 percent of consumers say businesses understand them as a person and their customer service preferences ‘extremely well,’ while 63 percent think organizations should make getting to know them better their top priority.

• Poor customer service can cost businesses customers:
Seventy-seven percent of customers agree the standard of customer service they receive is a major determining factor in their brand loyalty. In addition, 89 percent say receiving poor customer service from a business damages their impression of the brand. Significantly, 75 percent also say they have previously stopped doing business with an organization because of poor customer service. Forty-four percent report that if they receive a negative customer service experience, they immediately stop the purchase and move to another vendor. Despite this, only 35 percent of business decision makers say they lose customers ‘all the time’ or ‘fairly regularly’ as a result of providing poor customer service.

• Customers know what they want:
Consumers highlighted specific areas of frustration within customer service -- providing businesses with a clear roadmap for improvement. Their top three frustrations include taking too long to receive service (82 percent), having to repeat themselves when switching between channels or agents (76 percent), and not knowing the status of the query (64 percent). When asked what made for a positive customer service experience, 59 percent agree that a quick resolution of their issue or question mattered most, followed by a need for knowledgeable service agents (48 percent) and a fast response (47 percent).

“Good customer service can be the difference between success and failure. This study tells us that organizations still have a long way to go before they are able to fully meet the expectations of their customers,” said Tom Libretto, chief marketing officer, Pegasystems. “The good news is that there is overall agreement on what matters most. Solutions are available to help businesses understand and proactively address customer issues, while also arming customer-facing staff with the tools they need to provide more contextual, relevant, and knowledgeable service. Customers win, employees win, and positive business outcomes are delivered as a result.