DetNet Business Case

Executive Summary

An AECI company, DetNet, is the creator of the world’s leading electronic detonation
equipment. The company has experienced 300% annual revenue and volume growth
over the last three years. This “explosive” growth challenged DetNet by requiring a
review of existing explosives manufacturing techniques, especially in light of pending
global expansion. The key requirements were:
• 100% reliability

• Scalability to support international expansion and new plants

• Cost effective operational costs

DetNet chose to develop a Linux and open source driven plant management system.
Their decision was made after an in-depth analysis of business risk and long term
operating costs. The savings in actual costs were estimated at approximately R9
million per plant, over 90% of a vendor-based solution.

Business Need

DetNet’s electronic detonator business is facing rapid growth and they need to
develop an explosives manufacturing system that will cost-effectively support their
international expansion.

Solution Criteria

• Reliability: - Errors in the explosive industry often lead to fatalities. The system
introduced by DetNet must be 100% reliable and results of a power or system
failure predictable.

• Low operating and support costs: - Plant downtime results in significant costs
and the process of approval of system changes has time implications. The new
system must ensure that plants remain in operation at all times and regular
maintenance is reduced. The service support received must be timeous due to
the critical nature of explosives manufacturing.

• Scalability: - The solution must be scalable to manage DetNet plants worldwide.

• Low deployment costs:- The solution must be cost and time effective to deploy
around the world

Solution Overview

DetNet opted for an internally developed Linux and PostgreSQL solution to manage
the manufacturing process. The architecture revolves around a central database that
holds the manufacturing instruction and relatively dumb embedded controller devices
that is driven by an embedded PC104 control board. The PC104 control boards
communicate with the central database to identify their next task. Each embedded
controller’s PC104 board boots remotely with a striped down Linux kernel from the
same server that stores the task lists for each control unit. This ensures that an
accurate record is kept of the last task undertaken by any device.
The solution utilizes open standards (such as TCP/IP) for communication and
therefore can be utilized as DetNet rolls out new plants internationally. A new plant
can have a local database server that is queried by its devices. This server can be
updated as needed by DetNet across the Internet.

Benefits of the Solution

DetNet management opted for an in-house solution following their analysis of vendor
solutions and costs versus the development of an in-house system.

• Reliability: - DetNet stripped the Linux kernel down to the base necessities and
wrote simple drivers for their embedded control equipment in order to avoid any
unnecessary code superfluous to the critical task. They architecture based on
Linux and PostgreSQL to effectively enable the “dumb” production machines to
receive their instructions from a central database via TCP/IP. Each production
control unit is identified by its MAC address. Should the plant control equipment
device fail the central database will retain the memory of the last and
forthcoming task ensuring reliability and control. Control equipment can thus be
replaced and with a simple reassignment of the replacement unit’s MAC address
in the database, the replacement unit will immediately take over the task of the
failed unit.

• Low operating and support costs: - DetNet selected Linux and open source
components in order to keep control over changes and support in-house. This led
to the development of a structured platform with extensive documentation and
testing to make certain that no single staff member was critical to system
operation. Linux’s open standards ensure that there is no vendor “lock-in” from
the perspective of switching costs. The need to reduce system downtime ruled
out many solutions and components from commercial vendors because upgrades,
system version incompatibility and other factors pose a significant business
threat to DetNet. Large vendors were unable to offer the level of support that
DetNet as an SME required and the business risk of utilizing a smaller vendor was
deemed to be too high.

• Scalability: - DetNet’s Linux solution utilised TCP/IP technology to cost

effectively roll-out the system worldwide. The company’s production machines
remain “dumb”, so updates only take place on the central database. The low cost
of the solution means that standardised equipment can be used throughout
DetNet’s plants.

• Low implementation costs: - The development of a Linux and open source

component solution has saved DetNet as estimated R9 million in deployment
costs and substantially more in terms of operating costs.

About the company

DetNet is a leading provider of electronic detonators to mines around the world. A

South African company, its solutions are engineered locally and sold internationally.