COURS INTENSIF (disponible uniquement en anglais)

Level: Introductory

Facilitators: Sihong Peng, Consultant, Minax Inc.

As an essential tool to gauge the health of the operation, mine metrics report is often built within Microsoft Excel TM with data sourced from various department files. The engineering team ensures all data is updated properly and sends out a PDF version of the report by email. While this process satisfies the needs for data consumption by leadership on a computer screen, it often makes consumption on mobile devices difficult and inefficient.

Through this short course, attendees are introduced to Power BI, a tool intended to make data reporting and consumption streamlined and mobile-friendly. Attendees learn how to bring their existing mine production data into Power BI. Then attendees get hands-on experience in making charts and cards to present mine KPIs in a visually informative manner. Finally, attendees can expect to automate the data refresh process and distribute the report on a defined schedule.

As a bonus to the CIM attendees, this short course will also introduce the automation of data refresh from the attendee’s organization network drives to enable full automation of source data refresh. Additionally, attendees can also expect to create a mobile-native dashboard geared towards data consumption on a mobile phone.

Top Takeaways:

• Understanding the key differences and advantages of both the traditional (Excel) way and the Power BI way

• Understanding of the general workflow from source data to final report

• Gaining hands-on experience of developing a mine metrics report in Power BI for interactive self-service data consumption (both on PC and on mobile)

• Experiencing the efficiency gain of automating routine work through Power Automate Free sample reports for customization to suit attendee’s business scenarios

* Participants are required to bring their own laptop with the admin rights or a laptop with Power BI for Desktop and Power Automate installed

Short Course Objectives:

• Learn the basic use of Power BI

• Gain hands-on experience in linking various production data sources for automated reporting Understand data transformation techniques

• Set up robotic routines to automatically refresh data with minimal manual intervention

• Use metrics and goals to track high-level progress

• Share data and report to target audience at given frequency

Target Audience:

Mine Technical Services Personnel, Metrics Engineers, Mine Superintendents and Managers, IT Business Partners, Data and Reporting Analysts and Specialists, Digital Transformation Personnel and People with Interest in Data Analysis

About the instructors:

Sihong has worked in the mining industry since 2011 with a wide range of experience including surveying, ventilation, ground control, geology, development planning, production planning, mine design and scheduling, and business intelligence. He has always been interested in process improvement through automation. Prior to founding Minax Inc., a consulting business focusing on helping mining operations with their digitalization efforts, Sihong assumed the role of Superintendent - iROC Data and Governance at Vale’s iROC where he led the development and implementation of multiple digital solutions and Power BI reports that automate data transmission near real-time to mine site leadership and other stakeholders in a digital format. Sihong is a certified professional engineer in the province of Ontario. He has also received the data science certificate from University of Toronto and University of Waterloo. Sihong received his Master of Applied Science degree in mineral resources engineering from Laurentian University in Canada and his Bachelor of Science degree in information and computation science from Wuhan University of Technology in China.