New BHP chief Mike Henry plans faster hi-tech push

Incoming BHP chief Mike Henry has signalled an accelerated approach to the adoption of new technology at the moner.

Incoming BHP chief exceutive Mike Henry Picture: Aaron Francis

Incoming BHP chief executive Mike Henry has signalled an accelerated approach to the adoption of new technology when he takes the company’s top job in the new year, telling a resources technology conference in Perth he plans to move quickly to cement BHP’s commitment to new mining technology.

Speaking in his first public appearance since being tapped to take the top job at BHP on November 14, Mr Henry said the company’s priorities would remain unchanged when he replaced Andrew Mackenzie as chief executive, but he wanted to move “more quickly” on initiatives to improve safety and productivity at the mining giant.

The resources conference in Perth was a major stop on Mr Henry’s whistlestop tour of BHP’s global operations, and the CEO-elect made a point of noting that his first ports of call were BHP’s Jimblebar mine — where the company launched its first autonomous truck pilot program in 2017 — and the Singapore headquarters of its technology division.

“Our highest order priorities remain the same but I want to spend the next six weeks getting out to BHP’s operations and offices globally to discuss views on what we can do to build upon the great work of recent years to become safer, more productive, and more valuable, more quickly,” he said.

When taking the role, Mr Henry told reporters that he expected to outline his initial thoughts on BHP’s future under his leadership at the company’s February 18 half-year results. But it is understood he is keen to hit the ground running when he takes control of the company in January, and may look to accelerate the pace of change at the ­company.

Mr Henry has met with members of BHP’s senior leadership team across the country and in Singapore during the past two weeks, as well as holding town hall meetings with its staff, focusing on a business-as-usual message, but flagging an increased commitment to using technology to cut costs and increase productivity across its operations.

BHP has previously been seen as a laggard to rivals Rio Tinto and Fortescue in the rollout of technological change, preferring to take the mantle of “fast adopter” rather than first mover. It introduced the first autonomous trucks to its Pilbara operations in 2007, a decade after Rio Tinto began pilot trials of the technology at its own mines, and is still to make a major move on automating its rail network.

But that approach has shifted during the last year, since BHP opened up its Eastern Ridge mine to become an “innovation testing ground”, and began building a bigger team to design and trial new technology, or adapt existing technology to solve its own ­problems.

BHP is now rolling out automated trucks and drilling rigs on a grander scale, this month announcing it plans to introduce the technology at its Goonyella Riverside coal mine in Queensland, but it is understood Mr Henry and his leadership team believe the real productivity gains will come from smaller and cheaper hi-tech fixes to internal bottlenecks rather than big-spending technology advances.

“We already have some good, new products coming out of the centre that are making our operations more productive,” Mr Henry said.

“For example, we have created an industrial ‘Internet of Things’ sensor gateway. This reliably and securely collects data from sensors on BHP mobile equipment such as trucks and vehicles, and fixed-plant equipment such as drills and conveyors.”

The tool, believed to cost less than $500, allows BHP to tap into the internal and external sensors on its machinery — including radar, lidar and internal diagnostic monitoring systems on its autonomous trucks, and a vast array of temperature and other monitoring systems on other equipment — and deliver the data direct to BHP’s own systems for analysis.

Using a separate application development team, partly based in Shanghai, BHP then designed systems to feed that data into its maintenance teams — effectively bypassing costly and, BHP argues, less efficient monitoring systems supplied by equipment manufacturers.

“This is done by giving our maintainers live equipment diagnostics via a tablet or smartphone. It keeps them away from running equipment which is dangerous, and takes any guess work out of maintenance,” Mr Henry told the conference on Wednesday.

“What encourages me most aside from the great operational outcomes is it only took our team 16 weeks to go from concept to first prototype of the tool.”

Working with an unnamed WA start-up, Eastern Ridge has also rolled out new sound-monitoring devices attached to existing fibre-optic cables on much of its major equipment, such as conveyor belts, building up a massive data set of the noise its machinery makes when operating smoothly.