Immersive Training for Mine Operations

Large mine operators have an extensive onboarding process. Teams are educated on various mines, operations, equipment, and risks within a short span of a few hours using powerpoint presentations by HR teams. Over time, they learn the ropes as they work with field teams. Mine operators are generally large conglomerates employing people in the thousands, making it difficult for HR teams to effectively communicate with a distributed and diverse workforce. We've HRs spend 25% of their working hours repeating the same presentation for new joinees or refresher courses without any impact on the quality of learning or knowledge retention.

Human Resources teams today spend 25% of their time doing repetitive tasks of running the same presentations week-in, week-out because they do not see an effective solution to replace their classroom sessions. They don't email the presentation to employees for them to read up on, instead choose to make them in-person. This is time and energy taken away from addressing pertinent employee issues and implementing new organisational techniques. The content is generally oriented towards safety, and best operations in some of the most hostile environments on the planet. Hence, HR teams have not found a tool that can effectively replace their classroom sessions, and inevitably take these sessions in-person.

Instead of making more attractive presentations (that have hit a saturation point), we recreate presentations as 3D immersive experiences in virtual reality. Fabrik’s VR training platform simulates the entire operational lifecycle from raw earth to finished products within a virtual mine with aspects like:

• Mirroring real-life: Each training module is built to mirror real-life operations. The VR system recreates mine site conditions, including fluctuating terrain, equipment behaviour, and environmental factors.
• Scenario-based modules: Modules are organised around operational phases pre-start safety checks, equipment operations, and emergency responses. Each phase concludes with QnA to evaluate trainees on knowledge retention and recall.
• Repeatable learning experience: Unlike one-off training sessions, the VR system is designed for continuous use. L&D teams have the ability to make changes on the training modules to create new scenarios for operators thereby keeping this exercise fresh every time a person wears the VR headset.

We free up 25% of the HRs calendars every week by replacing their in-class sessions with self-learning using virtual reality. As an added benefit, we see renewed interest in learning through virtual reality, something that is not possible using powerpoints, PDFs, or other reading materials. We see operators and trainees rush to be the first to try out these training modules. They are gamified, immersive, and fun. Give the nature of technology, it also enables us to track performance, provide immediate feedback, and make adjustments on the module based on user behavior. Ultimately, these modules serve an two outcomes on the field:

1. Reduced accident rates, and
2. Continuous upskilling of the workforce.

In the near future, you can monitor operations of the entire mine (or a simulated version of the entire mine for future operations) on a digital twin, complete with training, material handling, equipment operations, and human safety. And after a mine ceases to operate, restoring the land to it's previous form before mining operations. And this extends further to mining in remote and hostile environments without human presence. The future of mining is this entire exercise executed on software before moving a muscle. Virtual reality is the first step towards futuristic mining operations.