Abstract
The Minor dissertation, ‘Development of a framework to improve the rate of adoption of 4IR disruptive technologies in the South African mining industry’ is a research project that is intended to understand the rate of adoption of 4IR technology and digital transformation in the South Africa mining industry.
The approach of the dissertation is to understand the historical nature of the South African mining industry and the characteristics that make it unique.
The dissertation then goes on to investigate the maturity of the South African mining industry against other mining regions across the world in terms of the adoption and experimentation with 4IR technologies.
The 4IR technologies considered fit for mining benefit according to this dissertation are cloud computing, automated mining machinery, IoT, Artificial Intelligence & Machine learning, Drone technology and Connected Safet worker technology.
From the research conducted it is confirmed that the rate of adoption of technology within the industry was in fact lower when compared to other regions around the world with cited factors for the situation including technical skills availability, fear for job loss, culture, and infrastructure availability.
This led to the prioritization to align mining operations with the African mining vision and including clear digital objectives within an operation’s strategy before creating a roadmap to achieve the implementation of 4IR technology use cases in mining operations in South Africa.
Key words: South African mining industry, mining operations, 4IR technologies, digital transformation, technology adoption, digitalisation, technology strategy, infrastructure, governance, Change Management, Digital Strategy, Drone Technology, Autonomous mining equipment, Artificial Intelligence, Safer Worker, Internet of Things, Mining lifecycle, Mining Maturity