Sandvik Mining and Rock Technology's digital offering ranges from systems for autonomous equipment and features, such as the AutoMine platform, to systems for process management and optimisation, to tailored data analytics solutions.

The company said it understands the essential role its systems will play within the larger digital ecosystem at each of its customers' sites. Sandvik systems will be able to interface and exchange data with other systems around the operation, ensuring that the value of the data can be unlocked. Accordingly, Sandvik wants to take the lead in shaping industry standards in data interoperability.

The Sandvik data interoperability policy goes into detail about data accessibility, fleet data compatibility, data rights, and control and data privacy.

Patrick Murphy, president, rock drills and technologies, Sandvik Mining and Rock Technology, commented: "In their desire for the optimal safety, productivity and profitability of their mining operations, our customers are looking to digital technologies to enable optimised processes.

The GDPR is a European Union (EU) law on data protection and privacy, which also applies to the export of personal data outside the EU. It comes into effect on May 25, 2018, with the intention of harmonising data privacy laws across Europe.

"Sandvik systems and equipment will form a key part of the digital ecosystems at these mines of the future."

He added: "Our customers have naturally asked that they can access equipment health and productivity data from the solutions that we provide them.

"While interfaces are not available for all equipment models today, these will be progressively rolled out as new products come to market. However, there are today already over 1,000 machines connected to our industry-leading, cloud-connected productivity and eCommerce platform, My Sandvik, as well as the more advanced OptiMine mining process optimisation platform. Data interfaces can be created so that the customer can access the raw data from these offerings."

The data interoperability policy outlines the principles behind Sandvik's digital offering, explaining, for example, how data can be accessed, depending on the customer's fleet - i.e. at equipment level, at server level on-site or within the cloud.

"We know that cloud-based data processing services offer tremendous advantages over local server based solutions, and are critical in leveraging the full potential of the industrial Internet of Things," said Manny Maloney, general counsel at Sandvik Mining and Rock Technology.

"And when our customers choose us to process data on their behalf, we don't take it lightly. Access to data needs to be defined and restricted, because it is often operator-related and commercially sensitive."

Sandvik stated that the data interoperability policy is designed to ensure the highest levels of data privacy and security, while ensuring the customer retains all rights to information related to the use and application of their equipment.

The policy has been designed with the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) in mind. The GDPR is a European Union (EU) law on data protection and privacy, which also applies to the export of personal data outside the EU. It comes into effect on May 25, 2018, with the intention of harmonising data privacy laws across Europe.

"Although the GDPR is a European regulation, we aspire to apply the same level of rigor regarding data privacy across the world, wherever we operate," confirmed Maloney.

The Sandvik Mining and Rock Technology Interoperability Policy is available on the My Sandvik customer portal.