 From San Francisco, it's theCUBE. Covering OSISoft, PiWorld 2018, brought to you by OSISoft. Hey, welcome back, everybody. Jeff Frick here with theCUBE. We're in downtown San Francisco at OSISoft. PiWorld 2018, getting to the end of the day. It's been a very busy day. A lot of great conversations. And about 3,000 people here are talking about the Industrial Internet of Things and IoT and really process improvement using data. They've been at it for almost four decades. We're excited to have a practitioner. He's Tararana. He is the Digital Transformation Process Control and Systems Engineering for Barrett Gold. Tar, good to see you. Oh, nice to meet you as well. Absolutely. Thank you. So, a little bit of basics on Barrett Gold. Kind of, who are you guys? What's your business? All right, so Barrett Gold Corporation, it's the largest gold producer, as of today, in the world. And we have about 13 operating sites across the world. We are headquartered in Toronto, Ontario, Canada. Okay. We are hugely focused in the Americas. About 75% of our revenue comes from the Americas. So that's North America and South America. And then we have other projects and mining operations across the world, Australia, Chile, Zambia in Africa, Saudi Arabia. So it's global. So you are, you're basically getting the gold out of the dirt. From the rocks. From the rocks. Yeah. And it's pretty interesting, right? We always think of that. We're here in San Francisco, right? 1849 is when it all started. It was a guy with a pan. But that's not how it works anymore, right now. No. It's a big industrial process that starts with lots of truckloads of ore. And then at the end of many, many steps out comes the gold. Yeah. And we've heard on a number of times there's so many process improvements that basically can increase the percentage of gold that you can extract out of that ore. And to that note, there are a couple of things that we are actually looking at. So not only that, but also as we are moving into the future, the gold grades from the ore is diminishing. And that's where I think we are in the right place because we are looking at technology. We are looking at the buzzwords like artificial intelligence to help us in that phase. Because all the good grades are almost gone. So to get that little gold that's in a big mass of rock, we definitely need to look at technologies. So the grade is the percentage of gold per unit of ore, right? Because the gold itself is the same gold when you get it out. The percentage of gold in that mass of rock. So gold mining's been going on for a long time. What are some of the opportunities for you guys to use software to basically get your yield up? Okay, so there are a couple of things where we can look at technology. So number one is safety. So as the gold grade is going down, which also means we are actually going deeper in the mine. So as we go deeper in the mine, that means it's becoming unsafe for people operating underground. So we're looking at technology, we're looking at things like autonomous vehicles, artificial intelligence algorithms that can help us in exploration. And then other things like robotics, drones, all kinds of stuff. So the technology space is huge for us to explore, to use and then to go to safety. Of course we are looking at reducing our operating costs, increasing productivity as much as we can, and hence lower our ASIC, which is the all-in-sustaining cost. So the autonomous vehicles is an interesting one. I don't think most people are aware how many autonomous vehicles operate in mines. I don't know if it's gold mines specifically, but I think we've talked to Caterpillar before, and there's a lot of autonomous vehicles running around mining operations. That's the future, definitely. So right now we are actually taking a couple of projects to run these autonomous mines. But you're right, it's not only the gold industry, but across mining and metals industry. And then what is digital transformation in mining? We think of big lumpy assets that are made out of rocks and steel and rubber and heavy, heavy, heavy industry, heavy, heavy machinery. So what does digital transformation look like in the gold industry? So again, this is very interesting and also dangerous. Why say that? Because I'll tackle the dangerous piece first, because digital transformation is again a buzzword like we have gone through different ones in the past. What we are targeting to do through digital information or transformation is not new. We have attempted to do this in the past with some degree of success. But as you know, the mining industry is a very cyclical industry. So when we were in the peak of the cycle, we invested a lot of money. We did a lot of cool projects, but as soon as we moved into the downward cycle, the budgets were tighter, so some of those projects were taken off the table. But now what's happening is we are taking it back, but we are looking at this as an enabler. What that means is we are democratizing the digital transformation laterally and vertically, which means within the site and also across the organization. So we are educating our operators. We are educating the metallurgists and all that because digital transformation is more cultural transformation. We all have these cool gadgets and a lot of these we use in our daily lives. But how we can use these effectively in the mining world, how we can use things like iPads, wireless technology, and bring that information, as I mentioned to you before, on the table of the operators so that they are empowered now to make decisions rather than waiting forever for their front-line supervisors to give them that information. So now with the use of digital transformation as an enabler, we're hoping that, A, we are making it safer. We are democratizing this as well as making decisions faster, efficient. So it's pretty interesting on the democratization because we see that in a lot of industries. So basically giving the power, the tools and the data to a broader group of people so they can make better decisions on the line. That's really the operator side. But you said something interesting too before we turn the cameras on about transparency, not only at the site but across the company so that more people have more visibility into more pieces of the puzzle. So how's that been going? It has been going great so far. So what I meant by that was that the communities that we operate in, so Nevada in the States, Valadero San Juan community in Argentina, so communities like that. So now with the help of digital transformation we can also take this information to the community. Now they are more excited about what we are doing rather than being skeptical about us not sharing with them. So I think that is going great. The other aspect I should bring out is environmental. So environmental is a big piece. So safety, health and environment, we live by that because that's our license to operate. So with the help of digital transformation and by sharing this information with our communities I think we can reach our goal and bring everybody on board along this journey. And I would imagine that ties directly back into trust. Correct. With the transparency, which I'm sure can be a big point of friction if you don't have that transparency. Absolutely. Especially on the environmental side. Yeah. So what are you here for? What are you finding here at PyWorld? Okay, so and I don't think I mentioned this but along this journey we are also looking for strategic partners because we cannot do this all by ourselves. Right? And that was one of the reasons why digital transformation failed before is we created silos. We didn't want to collaborate. So we wanted to keep all the information within ourselves and we were not sharing the information not only publicly but also within the organization. So what my role here in this conference is to share with all our peers in the industry what we have been doing and also learn from others what they have been doing so that we can collaborate and make mining industry in general very lucrative industry for everybody and make it safer and productive. So I would imagine there's probably a lot of sensitivity in sharing some of the operating processes and I would imagine there's some proprietary technology in the way that you get your yield out of the ore. At the same time, I would imagine safety and environmental can only benefit the industry if you share that information. I would imagine that's not what you're going to build your competitive advantage on and that's really more of an opportunity for industry sharing if you will. So the point about sharing information about production and yes, that is definitely sensitive but I think what we are interested in sharing is the concepts, how we can do this digital transformation together rather than the numbers that we're looking at. We're looking at percentage improvement. So even if I can share what we are doing with my peers in the industry in general and if they are benefited but I think that's great for the mining industry. Is the industry more receptive to that sharing than it has been in the past? Definitely, there is more sharing now but of course there are still some hurdles and I'm hoping that attending conferences like this will make those hurdles smaller and smaller and we can do better. All right, well Tara, thanks for taking a few minutes and sharing your story and wish you obviously a lot of success on the safety and getting gold cheaper so we can all buy our wives bigger necklaces from other days coming up, right? Absolutely, yeah. Well thank you very much and it's my pleasure to share and let's enjoy the conference. All right, well thanks a lot. It's Tara and Jeff, you're watching theCUBE from OSI Soft, High World, 2018, San Francisco. Thanks for watching.