2023 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition

The South African Mining Industry directly employs more than 450 000 people, and has consistently seen a significant reduction in Total Capital to Labour ratio expenditure over the past few years. This reduction means that more focus is being placed on retaining the services of the mining labour force, even in the advent of digital transformation in mining, driven by the core technologies of the Fourth Industrial Revolution. Most underground hard-rock mining companies have adopted some form of automation where possible, however the nature of the orebodies and infrastructure constraints favour conventional and human-centred mechanised mining methods over completely automated production environments. The skillset of the workforce is therefore crucial in maintaining high production levels with zero harm, whilst planning for technology and operational changes brought about by continuous improvement initiatives in these environments. A challenge exists when balancing the insight and efficiencies brought about by introduction of new technologies, with the generally low-level of skillset of much of the labour force. An appropriate strategy for skills development is therefore crucial to ensure that the workforce is suitably trained to capitalise on the offerings that new interventions bring about.

The Department of Mining Engineering and Mine Surveying has recently established a simulated mining environment, herein referred to as the “mock-mine”, to bridge the gap between students, the department, and industry stakeholders. This mock-mine includes replicas of multiple sections in an underground mine, including a haulage, cross-cut, refuge bay, stope and virtual blast wall. The platform was designed to be modular, for capacity to represent the workings of multiple commodity environments such as gold and platinum. The use of cyber-physical tools such as VR and AR experiences added to the modularity and allowed the users to gain an enhanced experience of what it would be like to be in a mine, when combining visual, tactile, acoustic and olfactory stimulations. The added advantage of easy access makes the platform ideally suited to serve as a test-bed to support proof of concept research for industry partners. This approach supported the pedagogy of connectivism, wherein students were taught to use digital tools, as well as adopting the use of digital tools to facilitate the transfer of knowledge. In doing so, barriers of literacy levels, language differences and inexperience with mining technologies were addressed.