With ever-increasing productivity targets in mining operations, there is a growing interest in mining automation. In future mines, remote-controlled and autonomous haulers will operate underground guided by LiDAR sensors. We envision reusing LiDAR measurements to maintain accurate mine maps that would contribute to both safety and productivity. Extrapolating from a pilot project on reliable wireless communication in Boliden's Kankberg mine, we propose establishing a system-of-systems (SoS) with LIDAR-equipped haulers and existing mapping solutions as constituent systems. SoS requirements engineering inevitably adds a political layer, as independent actors are stakeholders both on the system and SoS levels. We present four SoS scenarios representing different business models, discussing how development and operations could be distributed among Boliden and external stakeholders, e.g., the vehicle suppliers, the hauling company, and the developers of the mapping software. Based on eight key variation points, we compare the four scenarios from both technical and business perspectives. Finally, we validate our findings in a seminar with participants from the relevant stakeholders. We conclude that to determine which scenario is the most promising for Boliden, trade-offs regarding control, costs, risks, and innovation must be carefully evaluated.
Boliden has an explicit ambition to run projects in-house, i.e., internal know-how is considered fundamental. The current automation trend promises increased productivity through the introduction of autonomous machines, wireless data transfer, and positioning of people and equipment –- all these solutions rely on software-intensive systems. However, whether Boliden will be able to keep all required technical software expertise in-house is uncertain. The scaling role of software in traditional industries has attracted considerable research efforts lately @cite_12 , and turning into a software-intensive company is an acknowledged challenge. The IT department at Boliden roughly employs 100 people including support functions, but few of them are software developers.
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This book is open access under a CC BY 4.0 license. This book is intended primarily for practitioners who are facing the softwareisation of their business. It presents the Scaling Management Framework, a model based on collected experiences from companies that have already made the journey to give software a central role within the organization. The model is unique because it suggests a holistic method to analyze and plan your journey. It simply means that you cant just focus solely on your products or services. You also have to look closely at your processes and your organization, the way you make decisions and get things done. Inevitably, these will have to change. Software has changed the rules of the game. The world talks about the digitalization in industry and society how the focus has shifted from producing tangible things towards software and services. This trend started many years ago, but is now affecting every company, whether its a software company or not. There are many companies that have already made a digitalization journey and many are about to embark on this journey like you. How do you transform your organization when software is becoming a critical part of your business? This book comes with a map, a compass, and suggested journeys along with selected travel stories comprising best practices and lessons learned from past digitalization journeys. Use the map to find your way in the digitalization landscape, and use the compass to find the direction of your journey.