PAMA Brings the Smart Mining Company Concept to Life with Microsoft

 |   Indonesia News Center

PT Pamapersada Nusantara (PAMA), a mining company and a subsidiary of United Tractors, started its business in Indonesia in 1993 as a heavy equipment provider. Today, PAMA has successfully developed its potential to become one of the largest mining contractors and mining owners in Indonesia with an annual production capacity of approximately 1 billion cubic meters of overburden and 200 million tons of coal (as a comparison, national coal production is around 500 million tons per year).

Mining areas that are located far from the city center often bring a number of challenges for PAMA, such as employees experiencing boredom in the mining area or difficulty in coordinating between employees at the head office and the mining area. However, thanks to the transformation and innovation guided by Frans Kesuma, President Director of PAMA who has led the company for almost 10 years, PAMA has succeeded in answering these challenges by becoming a smart mining company.

“A smart mining company is a concept adopted by PAMA to digitize the company’s activities in order to carry out environmental restoration and maintain production continuity, while prioritizing the safety and welfare of employees. This is important so that we can continue contributing to the supply of coal and the Indonesian economy at large, especially in the midst of the COVID-19 pandemic which presents various operational challenges,” said Frans Kesuma.

Having been collaborating with Microsoft for almost 10 years, PAMA trusts Microsoft’s cloud to ensure the realization of this smart mining company concept. One of them is by developing 1PAMA, a multifunctional mobile application or internal super-app that provides access to various employee needs, from operational to health monitoring. This application is built using Cloud Serverless Platforms on Microsoft Azure, such as Azure Kubernetes Services and Azure SQL Database, which is integrated with continuous integration and continuous delivery (CI/CD) capabilities that can enable the launch of any new features in 1PAMA application faster.

“More than 95% of our employees are in the mining area, where they live and work there on a monthly roster system. We are aware this can sometimes lead to boredom. Therefore, through one of the features in 1PAMA, we try to bring some fun for them. For example, by allowing employees to order food based on a weekly menu that has been prepared by the company’s mess hall, just like when we have food delivery orders. The difference is, it uses 1PAMA,” said Joseph Lembayung, CIO and Head of CIS PT Pamapersada Nusantara Group.

In addition to bringing benefits to employees, this feature also increases the effectiveness and efficiency of the company because it can provide data insights to mess hall officers regarding what foods employees like, how many ingredients to buy, and much more. Everything is done simply through Microsoft Azure’s analytics tools.

“Since this application is made by us, we are more flexible in making various modifications. For example, to monitor health, which is a top priority during a pandemic, 1PAMA now provides a geographic location-based attendance feature, so that employee mobility is monitored properly. If there are employees who have to travel, in accordance with health protocols, they must do a swab test first, with the history of employee swab results being directly stored in the 1PAMA application,” continued Joseph Lembayung.

Although there are a number of employee personal data stored in 1PAMA, employees do not need to worry because their data security and confidentiality are protected, thanks to comprehensive security in Microsoft Azure. Here, Azure Security Center is used to strengthen 1PAMA’s data security, while providing comprehensive recommendations to monitor and improve various security factors related to Microsoft Azure services used by 1PAMA in an effective, efficient, and sustainable manner. Meanwhile, at the network layer, there is Azure Web Application Firewall which provides centralized protection from exploitation and access vulnerabilities to the 1PAMA system in Microsoft Azure.

In addition to using 1PAMA as a super-app, PAMA also maximizes the realization of the smart mining company concept by utilizing a number of other technologies such as sensors, CCTV, and Video Analytics when exploring high-risk mining sites, in order to minimize work accidents. Various images and videos captured by this technology can also be shared easily through Microsoft Teams, so that communication and direction between employees in the field and those in the head office can be carried out seamlessly.

“We trust Microsoft to support our digital transformation process and bring the smart mining company concept to life because when we look at the cost and collaborative system, Microsoft meets these criteria. PAMA ourselves uses Microsoft’s cloud services as collaboration and productivity tools, where Microsoft Teams is the center of our work that connects employees on-site with employees at home in an integrated manner. On a scale of 0 (unsuccessful) – 1 (successful), we can say our productivity is considered successful (scale 1) thanks to the use of the cloud. In percentage, we also achieved 100% productivity because it has been successfully adopted and utilized by all employees,” Joseph Lembayung concluded.

As PAMA’s solution partner, Microsoft is proud to see the transformation that PAMA has made. “The digital transformation carried out by PAMA shows that the mining industry has transformed to be so modern. Various technological innovations can be applied to make work more effective and efficient. Not only that, innovation can also be done to maintain employee engagement. Microsoft is humbled to assist PAMA to become a smart mining company. Moving forward, we will continue looking for new solutions that can further empower PAMA,” said Sianto Wongjoyo, Customer Success Unit Director of Microsoft Indonesia.

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