Gina Rinehart-controlled Hancock owns 70% of Roy Hill with Marubeni Corp, POSCO and China Steel Corp as partners. The company engaged consulting and IT group Ajilon and its business analytics platform to “analyse vast troves of data [to enable] specialists to identify opportunities to optimise and transform operational processes, resulting in productivity improvements and cost reductions”.

Ajilon national analytics lead Jeremy Dennis said the Microsoft Azure-based business analytics platform had proven capable of processing vast amounts of data, and “streaming analytics [IoT], as well as visual analytics, data science and model management, all from a single technology stack”.

“The platform can ingest large volumes of data in real time, enabling data scientists and engineers to self-serve visualisation tools, develop predictive algorithms, and combine disparate information sources to discover real value,” Alijon said in a statement.

“Using IoT technology, the platform can stream near real-time sensor data from the mobile assets to allow rapid process analysis and efficiencies.”