Next stop, London

Rasmus Tammia heads Boliden’s mining artificial intelligence program, joining the Swedish metals and mining company from Scania 6.5 years ago, and has been part of a richly talented Global Mining Guidelines Group AI working group since November last year. He will be at Resourcing Tomorrow for the first time in December.

Richard Roberts: Resourcing Tomorrow is held in early December, which a lot of people say is the best time of year in London. Do you have a favourite time of year and favourite thing you do when you go to London?

Rasmus Tammia: You know what, I have never been to London. So I'm very excited about going. I love British culture. I watched The Crown on Netflix and I absolutely loved it. I watch Premier League [football]. I have been a fan of Manchester United and played football long ago. But I haven’t been to London or England. I've been to Scotland. 

Richard Roberts: Is there a place that you most want to go to while you’re there?

Rasmus Tammia: I guess they are the usual ones … Piccadilly Circus, Westminster Abbey; just seeing the gates of Buckingham Palace. Maybe some nice shopping.

Richard Roberts: You got your master’s degree in applied physics and electrical engineering at Linkoping University in Sweden. What drew you to the career that you moved into including, ultimately, mining?

Rasmus Tammia: Boliden has operations in my home town actually but that wasn’t the only reason I chose to transfer to Boliden. I don’t see myself as a miner per se. We’re not mining engineers in the department I work in. Our educational background is more applied physics and electrical engineering; a little bit of computer science as well. So we’re kind of the oddballs here internally.

At Scania I worked with control algorithms and developing those and I've done that also at Boliden. And now AI, of course. Control engineering is very much a sub-domain of AI.

So the transition from Scania to Boliden was kind of a natural progression or next step, I’d say. It’s applying my technical expertise in a different domain.

Richard Roberts: What do you see as the most important changes happening in the industry at the moment?

Rasmus Tammia: Within Boliden the sustainability question always comes down to license to operate. But if we're going to be much more sustainable we need to know how we are really conducting operations and that ties into gathering information. I feel like there’s this sense of urgency – that people want to know more about how our operations are going.

We have a lot of data, some people might say, but the industry as a whole does not necessarily know what to do with it. Hopefully I, and people with similar backgrounds, can come in and just help along the way. 

Electrification and autonomous operations are also going to play a much bigger part, I feel.

But in terms of the data and transparency I feel like there’s this sense of urgency that’s hard for me to describe in a tangible way. But something's definitely going on.

Richard Roberts: You haven't been in this industry for that long but what's the most significant change you've seen in the time that you have been in the industry?

Rasmus Tammia: Well, there’s a lot of talk about electrification within Boliden. A lot of stuff is happening around electrification currently. Getting down the CO2 emissions has been a very important strategy.

Richard Roberts: There was a conversation in Washington, DC, recently about the metal that will define the current age. Of course, we’ve had the Bronze Age, we've had the steel age, we've had the silicon age. What do you think is the metal that will define the next age?

Rasmus Tammia: Well, maybe we need to go back to the Copper Age. Depending on what kind of direction the battery technology development is taking … that [dominant] metal will be important as well.

Richard Roberts: Resourcing Tomorrow and its sister event in Australia, IMARC, have rapidly grown NextGen programs exposing students to the discussions, innovations and leaders shaping the industry’s future. What was something that shaped your path from student to thinking the industry was going to be a key part of your future?

Rasmus Tammia: I realised my educational background, what I was taught at university, was applicable in almost every industry. Yes, of course, the industries have different maturity levels but I feel like I can provide value almost anywhere I want to go, in one shape or form.

I always tell students to embrace learning because that will give you an open mind about facing a very uncertain future. I think that's the most important thing you can do currently.

Richard Roberts: I have just been listening to the CEO of Google talk on a podcast about change in the tech space. Mining also has some influential voices, some charismatic leaders and some entrepreneurial types: genuine agents of change. Who do you see as a major influencer in the space, or influencers?

Rasmus Tammia: To be honest I don’t have a great understanding of influential mining people. I think the Global Mining Guidelines Group does a really good job.

A co-worker of mine, my mentor, Peter Burman [Boliden mine automation program manager] is definitely a person that’s had a big impact on me, for sure. He has a long background from the telecommunication industry, with Ericsson here in Sweden. So he brings in a very fresh perspective I feel and challenges us all the time.

Richard Roberts: Does the industry need more of these types of influential voices?

Rasmus Tammia: Yeah, I think so. I feel like in this industry so many people with various different backgrounds could contribute and become really strong voices. There’s definitely an opening for that.