Are your geologists and drill supervisors holed up in the office for hundreds of hours per year shuffling paper reports, emails and spreadsheets, grinding their way through the administrative tasks of managing information?

In the mining sector, there is no source of aggregated industry drilling activity reporting such as in oil and gas operations. Krux Analytics has built an enterprise level cloud-based platform to capture, review, analyze, and leverage data from mining drilling activities to generate and establish a knowledge base in efficient operations for the industry. This powerful platform is enabling companies to manage data in real-time and optimize their decision making through the use of dashboards.

"We turn information into insight", a Krux's slogan states, is a huge leap forward for the mining industry. Krux has helped clients at 213 exploration sites worldwide to track enormous amounts of data that was previously handwritten or qualitatively observed. Their goal is to provide insight into roadblocks during operations and opportunities to improve drilling efficiency, rate of penetration, and safety for a given geology, target mineral, etc.

Krux established a team of engineers, geologists, and developers to tackle these challenges and design an agile, robust, single source platform that will allow increased knowledge to drive efficiency, safety, and performance. Krux has developed algorithms for data analysis and continues to strive towards real-time predictions and machine learning solutions, which is ground-breaking development for this industry. Additionally, they are collaborating with industry partners to ensure that their software can integrate with other mining software and technology. All this adds up to enabling clients to focus their efforts on activities that drive profitability, rather than administration work and know what rock is being drilled into as it is drilled, not after the core comes out of the hole.

Krux Analytics founder and CEO Jody Conrad told Australia's Mining Monthly the company was embarking on some game-changing technology brought over from the team's expertise in the oil and gas industry, like instrumentation and live data for predictive modelling.

A mechanical engineer by trade, Jody has more than 20 years of experience in the drilling industry from rig automation, operational data analytics and numerous system implementations. She knows drilling and says that is what sets Krux apart from other providers. "Not only do we understand drilling operations and business operating requirements, we also provide expert tailored customer support and training"

Prior to Krux's inception, no one has attempted to derive the metrics necessary to make quantifiable comparisons of drilling operators, equipment types, geology, application, etc.

Krux began by building the data architecture based on their knowledge and have expanded functionality based on client feedback. With this standardized architecture, trends are starting to emerge as visualized in their dashboards such as; meters per month, drilling cost variation by month, drilling efficiency differences by region/location, standby versus active drill time, cost per meter for different drilling types, and cost per activity, amongst many others. This knowledge of drilling performance metrics was completely unknown prior to Krux's work.

 

In recent years, Krux has expanded their platform to derive additional insights, including modules for timesheets, digital documentation, contracts, key performance indicators (KPI), and best-practice dashboards. The existing bit reporting module has been thoroughly evaluated by users and their feedback and data was incorporated to improve the data model development. Performance and user-friendly experience are important, which has led to the intuitive customizable dashboards, mobile application, and seamless offline use.

Krux is the only software that allows users to aggregate all their contracts together, enabling them to review costs and make meaningful comparisons."

"For more effective data-driven decision-making, data must be collected and integrated from various sources, with the instrumentation, drill type, data sources, and service provider all playing a role. By providing this integrated data to drill operators in real-time, Krux helps them to make informed decisions when they count."

"Krux enables mining companies and drill operators to target operational efficiencies, optimize performance on any scale, and add dollars directly to the bottom line. It does this by helping them to improve data-driven decision making by standardizing the collection and consistency of site data and allowing them to track drill programs, hole paths, and costs in real-time."

So, how does Krux turn information into insight?

• Accessibility at a global scale - Field users can enter data from any device, even offline. More often than not, sites are found in remote locations where satellite signals are weak to non-existent. Krux's field APP allows for offline data entry that synchronizes to the platform when a connection is reestablished. View advanced analytics, optimized for both mobile and desktop from anywhere there is internet. Krux has a user-friendly interface that is intuitive and easy to understand. Krux is a cloud-based service provider that can easily scale to meet project needs.
• Accuracy - Pre-configured, standardized, and automated digital options for field inputs plus timely report approvals from both parties ensures accurate data for reporting enable powerful insights to optimize operations. The integration of their latest module, KruxDAQ, will eventually automatically populate the daily shift report ensuring the most accurate operational data is being used for invoicing and operations.
• Agnostic Data Management - Data must be integrated from a variety of sources to provide the best insights. Instrumentation, the drill itself, and the service provider all play a role. It is Krux's role to manage this data and act as a decision facilitator. It allows users to consume multiple data sources and achieve consistent output and reporting. Krux becomes the single source of truth at the site to facilitate real-time decisions during operations.
• Security - For companies worried about storing information in the cloud, Krux is SOC 2 Certified. SOC2 is a technical auditing process and certification for data security under the American Institute of Certified Public Accountants. It assures companies that their data is stored in a controlled and audited environment.

In offering an instrumentation agnostic solution, Krux provides a seamless data management experience through integrations with third parties, ensuring the integrity, normalisation and visibility of data across their organisations.  https://www.kruxanalytics.com/