Contractor Companies’ Small Projects Facing Mining 4.0 in Chile: How Risky Is the Implementation of Industry 4.0 for Them?

Abstract

Despite the relevance of Chile's mining industry, risk models applied to contracts have not been intensively developed. This is a quantitative descriptive research, which focuses on the results of a risk assessment methodology applied for the analysis of potential industry 4.0 technologies to be implemented by contractor companies in Chile's mining sector. In this paper, an overview about mining 4.0 was done and Chile's large mining companies were analyzed during 2021-2022, obtaining contracts information from a relevant copper producer. A case was selected to apply the model and semi-structured in-depth interviews were conducted with the stakeholders involved in this industry. Based on our results we found small contracts concentrated the largest number of low and moderate-priority projects, but also the largest number of high-priority contracts. However, from a mining company's perspective, it seems that big projects are riskier than small projects under the future effects of Industry 4.0 technologies.