Looking Forward : IT! from Mid-May 2018 -...

Looking Forward : IT!
from Mid-May 2018 -
https://www.miningmagazine.com/sust...-in-mining-is-accelerating-says-rios-mcintosh
Rio Tinto group head of growth and innovation Stephen McIntosh .........
...... "If we don't disrupt our own ways of thinking and operating, we can be sure someone else will do it," McIntosh told the inaugural Future of Mining 2018 conference in Sydney, Australia.

Delivering the opening keynote address at the new conference, attended by more than 400 delegates, McIntosh said Rio Tinto and its peers were heading into a very different future for the industry than the one envisaged a decade ago..

He goes on to talk about how Rio ran a “hackathon” ( new word.) where 22 “frighteningly clever” young people had a sleepover and were fed pizza, burritos and data to fuel a brainstorming workshop that was extremely successful...
And ..

...McIntosh talked through several examples of the current impact of data analytics, cloud computing services and "cost-effective hyper-scale computing power", automation and modern communications on Rio Tinto's current assets and operations, declaring these and other technologies would continue to positively influence productivity, profitability and safety. He indicated that technology and innovation were integral to the company's Mine to Market Productivity drive aimed at generating an additional A$5 billion (US$3.8 billion) of free cash flow from company assets by the end of 2021.