World's Largest Copper Producer Chile's Codelco Uses Cisco Wi-Fi in Mines


Chile's Codelco, the World's Largest Copper Producer, Uses Cisco Wireless Technology in Its Mines


By Jenny Carless via News@Cisco

-/28 Dec, 2004 - Wi-Fi Technology News/-Codelco is the main copper producer in the world. The state-owned company, created in 1971, produces more than 1.5 million tons of copper per year. With exports reaching US$2.631 million, the enterprise was Chile's largest exporter in 2003.

It has four mining divisions, all located in the northern and central areas of Chile: Codelco Northern, El Salvador, Andina and El Teniente.

In 2000, Codelco workers committed to a goal of doubling the company's value and consolidating its world leadership as a copper producer by 2006, within the framework of a program known as the Enterprise Common Plan (PCE in Spanish).

Technological innovation cuts across all of the PCE goals and will permit the company to advance its objectives with efficiency, mobility and speed. "All the technology we're implementing will lead us to the mining of the future," says Marco Orellana, Information and Communications Technology corporate manager at Codelco.

In the area of information technology, the move towards efficiency started two years ago with the complete renewal of Codelco's corporate wide area network (WAN) with Cisco Systems technology.

Wireless is already in place at the corporate buildings in Calama, Los Andes, El Teniente and at the headquarters in Santiago, as well as the Andina Division underground mine and the Chuquicamata open pit mine. Soon the whole company will be connected, since work is underway on new projects, including the implementation in the short term of applications such as wireless IP telephony.

Wireless Mines
Professionals from Cisco and Codelco's Information and Communications Technology area have worked as a team to improve the company's production and administrative processes. The objective is to gain mobility and have online access to information.

In the production arena, the projects have faced significant challenges, because the equipment must work well in adverse conditions. In the refineries, magnetic fields generate problems for cable connections, and in the smelters, cables simply melt. So Wi-Fi is proving to be the best and most efficient alternative.

But even this technology requires special expertise. "The installation of wireless in buildings is not the same as it is in a mine, refinery or smelter," Orellana explains. "Conditions are very different."

Wireless networking is proving highly successful in Codelco's mining operations. The company is already enjoying the benefits of this technology - benefits that go beyond increases in productivity and cost savings to include improvements in the quality of life of the workers and a reduction in the risk of accidents:

In the Andina Division, many of the tunnels in an underground mine where employees walk are now connected by means of a wireless local area network (LAN), which also facilitates communications with the outside world.
El Teniente also has tunnels that are connected to the network with wireless technology.
At Andina, the operators who previously worked underground now work out of a modern office located in Los Andes, a few kilometers away from the mine. Wireless technology allows them to operate the enormous machines from a distance.

Getting the workers out of the mines considerably reduces the risk of accidents and simultaneously improves the quality of life of those who had to work in darkness before. Furthermore, costs for transporting the operators have been eliminated.

Bringing Mega-Trucks Online
Chuquicamata is the largest open pit mine in the world, with production reaching 596,000 tons of 99.99 percent pure copper. It also produces around 12,800 metric tons of fine molybdenum content as well as other sub-products such as anodic muds and sulfuric acid.

Enormous trucks that measure between three and 5.5 meters high and15 meters long and are too large and heavy to drive on regular roads circulate around this colossal mine.

It's of fundamental importance that these trucks be maintained in optimum condition, and servicing needs to take place at precise times. Previously, the process to determine the exact service time was imprecise; but today, wireless technology captures the necessary data online and indicates when the trucks should undergo maintenance.

"Savings have been substantial," explains Orellana. "The fact that one has updated information online is priceless. These are enormous and expensive trucks that are difficult to move around. The cost of an erroneous calculation could be a tragedy."

Moving Forward
Wireless technology has reached the mines, the corporate offices and even workers' homes.

The corporation recently launched the largest company-affiliated virtual community in Chile: the "Mining Village." It's an Internet broadband connection for more than 11,500 Codelco workers' homes, distributed among 28 cities. It's estimated that this initiative represented approximately 14.5 percent of all connections installed in Chile in 2003.

The next step at Codelco will be IP telephony. "We expect to enable both fixed and wireless IP telephony in the near future in parts of corporate headquarters, in order to connect and share services with the Andina Division," says Orellana. "A new subsidiary in Brazil will also be connected."

All these achievements have been facilitated by Cisco technology.

"At Codelco, everything that has represented technological renewal and innovation recently has received direct support from Cisco and its local operation in Chile," Orellana concludes. "Its technology has turned into a standard within our facilities."

The incorporation of new technologies into the mining processes and the efforts of Codelco's more than 17,000 workers are the key to fulfilling the objective of doubling the company's value. Through December 2003, the company had already reached 50 percent of that target. If everything continues at the same rate, it's a goal Codelco believes it can meet.

Jenny Carless is a freelance writer based in Santa Cruz, CA.

Source: Cisco Systems http://www.cisco.com