Jonathan Peck – CEO & President, Eclectia Productions Inc.
The Past: 1984 to 2025:
Jonathan Peck graduated with a B.Sc. in Geology (Specialization) from Concordia University, Montreal in 1984. He then completed an M.Eng. and Ph.D. in Mining Engineering at McGill University, Montreal in 1986 and 1989 respectively.
Between 1989 and 1992, Dr. Peck was the Laboratory Manager for the Canadian Centre for Automation & Robotics in Mining (CCARM), a research facility that catered to both underground & open-pit customers for the provision of advanced technology development & consulting services.
In 1992, Dr. Peck left CCARM to form AQUILA Mining Systems Limited where he served as CEO & President until 2002 at which time Caterpillar Inc. purchased 100% of the company. While at AQUILA he led the design & development of innovative monitoring (including productivity, rock recognition, diggability, dipper load weighment applications), control & HPGPS-based guidance systems for blasthole drills and cable shovels. He, along with leveraging core expertise at McGill (Centre for Intelligent Machines and others), was an early pioneer in the application of pattern recognition techniques to time series performance data acquired from monitoring blasthole drills operating in coal mines. These efforts included building and deploying embedded hardware systems on blasthole drills at New Brunswick Coal in 1993 that used an artificial neural network (ANN) to derive real-time coal recognition. The over 200 drill and shovel products deployed globally in open-pit mines during his tenure at AQUILA are still the standard by which competitive systems are compared. In addition, under his direction, AQUILA designed and developed the 1st CAN-Bus based digital control architecture for the 351 PitViper blasthole drill in collaboration with Ingersoll-Rand’s Drilling Solutions division (now a part of Epiroc).
Following the purchase of AQUILA by Caterpillar in 2002, Dr. Peck served as the MineStar Strategic Business Development Manager, NPI Manager and Product Manager in Caterpillar’s Information Products & Solutions Division (IP&SD) until 2004. His responsibilities in these roles encompassed all aspects related to MineStar product development, systems integration & testing, MineStar systems deployment at customer sites and on-going liaison with Caterpillar’s CTCT (Caterpillar-Trimble Control Technologies) division related to new product development.
Upon leaving Caterpillar in 2004, Dr. Peck formed Peck Tech Consulting Ltd., a company dedicated to the provision of consulting services to mining clients related to innovative technology definition, development, specification, assessment and deployment. As CEO and President up to the acquisition by Caterpillar Inc. in 2020, Dr. Peck’s clients included Accenture, ArcelorMittal (Canada), AREVA NC, Atlas-Copco (Epiroc), Agnico-Eagle Mines, BHP Billiton (Jansen), CAE, P&H Harnischfeger/JoyGlobal (Komatsu), Hexagon (Mining), Sandvik, Lafarge N.A., Barrick Gold, Kinross Gold, Newmont Mining, Rajant, Freeport McMoRan/Phelps-Dodge, Canadian Natural Resources Limited (CNRL), NACG, Finning (Canada), Caterpillar Inc., Detour Gold, Blackrock Metals, Maptek, Mintec, Teck Coal, Highland Valley Copper (Teck), Teck Resources, Hatch Engineering, Iron Ore Company of Canada (IOCC), Consolidated Thompson, MDA, Quadra FNX/KGHM, NASA-Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL), Shell Canada, Roy Hill Iron Ore, and Rio Tinto Technology & Innovations.
Dr. Peck also served as Head and Professor of the Department of Mining Engineering at Queen’s University, Kingston, Ontario, Canada from May 2005 until April 2007. He is currently an Adjunct Professor at the same institution responsible for the co-supervision of graduate students.
Upon the acquisition of Peck Tech by Caterpillar Inc. in 2020, Jon continued in the role of President and held the position of Caterpillar Chief Engineer (Precision Mining). In the Chief Engineer role, Jon was responsible to define the broad conceptual framework for Cat’s Precision Mining™ initiative – a solution aimed at collecting, processing and integrating data and contextual information from multiple Caterpillar and 3rd party sources into an end-to-end decision support capability to optimize the identification, tracking and management of material. During his 5 years at Peck Tech under Caterpillar, Jon also led the development of new blasthole drill related technology including advanced rock recognition algorithms, bit wear algorithms, 3D geospatial visualization systems, and control technologies to augment autonomous drill operations.
Over the past 40 years, Dr. Jonathan Peck has pioneered the definition and development of a broad range of innovative technologies for use on mobile equipment in the surface mining industry. The products that have resulted from this development continue to be the underlying technology for all and any competitive solutions in use today, while having a significant impact in reducing costs and increasing productivity in the surface mining industry.