U.S.-based mining technology company Hivekit has announced the launch of OPS.AI, a new technology that proactively coordinates and optimises mine operations, identifies bottlenecks, answers operational questions and executes authorised directives.

Early tests against historic mine operations data showed a 21% improvement in compliance to plan, alongside significant improvements in the utilisation of existing resources, according to the company.

OPS.AI achieves these efficiency gains by connecting the mine’s strategic and production plans with day-to-day operational execution. It maps high-level production goals to operational steps while taking into account the site’s full operational context – from asset tracking and performance metrics to geospatial information and data from systems such as ventilation, dewatering and maintenance.

This holistic, real-time view of the operation allows OPS.AI to, the company says, plan around actual resource availability, identify correlations, constraints and bottlenecks, and adjust shift goals and production cycles to real-world conditions. The result is a highly optimised and dynamic shift plan that takes both the mine’s goals and its current operational situation into account. OPS.AI can assign tasks, cycles and targets, and allocate people, vehicles and other resources accordingly.

But the shift plan is anything but static, the company claims, with human supervisors remaining in control. Any changes or adjustments made by supervisors are fed back into OPS.AI, which dynamically re-plans around them. Likewise, as ground conditions change, trucks break down, employees become unavailable or ventilation systems fail, OPS.AI takes those events into account and adjusts the operational plan accordingly.

“Mine plans are built around assumptions about equipment, people, infrastructure and conditions – but the reality underground or in the pit changes constantly,” Wolfram Hempel, CEO at Hivekit. “OPS.AI continuously reconciles what was supposed to happen with what is actually happening and helps the operation determine what should happen next.”

All proposed plans and actions are secured by a deterministic constraint layer – an additional checkpoint designed to offset the inherent uncertainty of AI systems. OPS.AI checks proposed plans against a defined set of operational rules and constraints, including safety requirements, mandatory break times, ventilation restrictions, equipment limitations and site-specific operating rules.

If a proposed plan or action violates one of these constraints, it is automatically rejected before it can be presented or executed. AI proposes; deterministic rules validate; authorised humans remain in control, the company explained.

OPS.AI is not limited to planning and replanning, Hivekit says, including an operational Copilot for mine managers, supervisors and dispatchers.

Users can ask questions such as: “How many tonnes have we lost due to the ventilation system breakdown?” or “What is the total output of all headings on Level 12?”

Rather than relying solely on a language model to produce an answer, the Copilot understands the structure and nature of the operational data available within the Hivekit platform. It translates questions into structured queries against the underlying data, interprets the results and presents them to the user through answers, tables and visualisations.

The Copilot is also capable of taking action. Within their existing permissions, authorized users can issue operational directives such as “Assign a new driver to Truck 14” or “remove Stope 112 from today’s production plan”. OPS.AI translates these instructions into actions within the underlying operational system while applying the same permission, validation and constraint layers used throughout the platform.

OPS.AI is now available as part of the wider Hivekit platform, which provides the operational data foundation and digital twin by aggregating, processing and visualising information from across the mine.

The company concluded: “By combining mine planning, live operational data, AI-driven optimisation, deterministic constraints and human oversight, OPS.AI is designed to help mines respond faster to changing conditions, make better use of existing resources and keep execution aligned with production goals.”

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