Big Oil seizes lithium opportunities
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26 August 2013, Toronto: Information Technology has the potential to catalyze mining operations and improve mine safety and sustainability by providing real time information, managing large volumes of data, and enabling communication with mine workers at all times. With almost a decade’s experience of planning and implementing IT systems at The Doe Run Company, Sharon Gietl will speak about Enterprise PMO at the upcoming Global Mining IT and Communication Summit in Toronto.
In a recent interview with Fleming Gulf, Gietl stated that she planned to discuss how Doe Run set up their enterprise PMO and attained recognition as runner-up in the “PMO of the Year” award in 2010. She will also explain how they continue to develop maturity around project delivery and how other mining companies can benchmark and learn from one another.
An increasing number of mining companies are implementing IT systems to empower business. Gietl also elaborated on the popular IT trends that the mining industry will witness in the future. “Trends I foresee in the next generation of mining include: Continued integration of process control technologies with the IT infrastructure and business technologies; specifically with the purpose of performing advanced data analytics to improve process performance, continued automation of mining tasks, particularly those tasks that are in hazardous work areas to protect employees from potential harm and also serve to lower operating costs and continued automation and data analysis within geology and exploration to reduce the cost to discover, define and develop new and current ore bodies.”, she said.
As Vice President and Chief Information Officer of the Doe Run Company, Sharon Gietl has been guiding the planning, implementation and management of the company’s information technology systems, enterprise project management office and enterprise content management since 2004. She is one of the 2011 St. Louis Business Journal’s 25 Most Influential Business Women, a 2010 Computerworld Premier 100 IT Leader and a 2009 Strathmore’s Who’s Who recipient. She oversees a team that has been recognized as one of the Top Technology Innovators across America in 2011 and in 2012 (according to Information Week 500).
At the 2nd Global Mining IT and Communication Summit, Gietl will be joined by CIOs and IT heads from De Beers, VALE, Hudbay Minerals, Teck Resources, Kinross Gold, Alacer Gold, Coeur Mining, Centerra Gold, Ambatovy, Cameco Corporation, Goldcorp, Nordgold Management and Agnico Eagles Mines to name a few. Key topics to be addressed will include amongst others, service delivery, enterprise asset management, six sigma methodologies, compliance requirement, big data v/s smart data, cloud computing on remote sites, mining network security systems, role of mobile communications, and wireless communications and technologies.
The summit is supported by CIPS: Canada’s Association of Information Technology Professionals, the Information Technology Association of Canada (ITAC) and the Information and Communication Technology Council of Canada (ICTC CTIC). Leading IT solution providers Illumiti, Dassault Systemes, NCI, Check Point Software and Appcentrica will also be participating at the summit.
