Rio Tinto To Partner With IGATE For Engineering Services Analytics

IGATE's recent engineering services analytics partnership with Rio Tinto is first of its kind in the mining industry and a validation of our view that engineering analytics will be catalyst for the evolution of engineering services from a niche offering into the mainstream (Read HfS 2015 predictions here).

IGATE will provide Rio Tinto with analytical capabilities to identify opportunities for enhancing efficiency and productivity across Rio Tinto’s managed operations. The partnership spans engineering research and development services, including industrial automation and control, software and embedded design and development, and product engineering services. IGATE will develop an Analytics Excellence Centre in Pune, India to support the global growth and development of Rio Tinto’s industry-leading Mine of the Future™ program.

Rio Tinto, a leading global mining and metals company, launched the Mine of the Future™ program to create next-generation systems and technologies that will enable it to become a global leader in fully integrated, and automated mining. The program aims to improve employee safety, increase productivity, lower energy consumption, and reduce the overall environmental impact of mining operations.

As part of the Mine of the Future™ program, Rio Tinto launched the state-of-the-art Processing Excellence Centre (PEC) in Brisbane, Australia in March 2014 to enhance monitoring and operational performance by examining in real time processing data from seven Rio Tinto operations spread across the globe.  IGATE will build on the work of the PEC and will analyze data captured by various business systems and the array of sensors attached to Rio Tinto’s fixed and mobile assets, to generate meaningful insights, significantly boosting productivity and safety.

This partnership is significant as it provides IGATE an opportunity to contribute to the organization-wide innovation program of a blue-chip client with its engineering services analytics portfolio.

Engineering services buyers often ask us whether they should stick with the dominant model of captives rather than move to outsourced engineering services. Now with the emergence of engineering analytics, M2M and IoT, service providers are able to offer services and a value proposition that is difficult for individual captive operations to keep up with. While this deal validates our view, we will continue researching and writing more on this theme. We recently launched our inaugural 2015 HfS Engineering Services Blueprint report, which will be a seminal view into the value propositions of today's leading engineering services providers including IGATE. Keep watching this space.