This chapter outlines the Use Cases occurring within OPC UA Companion Specification Mining. These have been defined and modelled by the members of the Specialist Working Groups of the OPC UA Companion Specification Mining. To logically classify Use Cases according to their affiliation to mining processes, so-called Application Cases were defined and formulated. Any Application Case corresponds to a specific mining process. For example, ‘Discontinuous Loading’ or ‘Drill and Blast’ in surface mining. Furthermore, an Application Case is composed of multiple Use Cases which are understood to be the atomic, process-oriented constituents of an Application Case. The precise definition of a machine or system participating in a specific Use Case is provided in the respective machine and system-level document (see Annex B).

Within each Use Case of a given Application Case, a sequence of information, between two or more participants (e.g. two machines), is defined to be exchanged. As each Use Case serves a specific goal, e.g. two autonomous mobile machines need to successfully exchange their trajectories, the information defined in a Use Case constitutes the communication interface of a machine or system, e.g. variables or methods required to reach the specific goal of the Use Case, and is thus contained in the OPC UA Information Models presented in this OPC UA Companion Specification. This allows for lightweight and goal-oriented OPC UA Information Models that shall be extended using the object-oriented feature set of OPC UA as further elaborated in the next paragraph.

The fact that only basic elements of information, e.g. variables or methods taken from the defined Use Cases, are included in the type definitions presented in this OPC UA Companion Specification, means that machine and system manufacturers or operators may need to extend the type definitions presented in order to meet their custom Use Case requirements. However, the OPC UA type definitions presented in this OPC UA Companion Specification are designed in such a way that additional information can easily be included. Moreover, the OPC UA Mining type definitions allow to exchange meta-information about machines and systems, e.g. device class or manufacturer name, by default. As OSI Layer 5-7 Edge-Server running on PLC hardware typically contain hundreds of variables, alarms, etc., to represent I/O signals, the OPC UA Information Models presented in this OPC UA Companion Specification may be heavily extended by machine manufacturers or operators. Table 12 gives an overview of the Application Cases included in the OPC UA Companion Specification Mining. The constituent Use Cases of the Application Cases can be taken from the corresponding documents.

Table 12 – Application Case Documents

Document Nr.	Application Case Name	Application Case Description
OPC 40569-1	Longwall Operation	Describing the Application and Use Cases for underground longwall operations. Examples of participating machines are the Shearer Loader and the Armoured Face Conveyor.
OPC 40569-2	Discontinuous Loading	Describing the Application and Use Cases for load-and-haul operations in surface mining. Examples of participating machines are the Dump Truck and the Excavator.
OPC 40569-3	Discontinuous Unloading	Describing the Application and Use Cases for haul- and-unload operations in surface mining. Examples of participating machines are the Dump Truck and the Rock Crusher.
OPC 40569-4	Dozing	Describing the Application and Use Cases for rock/debris-clearing dozing operations in surface mining. An example of a participating machine is the Dozer.