Harnessing Technology in diamond disruption
Sarine Technologies said that the Group’s CEO David Block participated in a key technology panel at the Fourth Dubai Diamond Conference (DDC), focusing on technology disruption and its positive potential for the diamond industry.
Titled, Disruption in Diamonds – Harnessing Technology for Positive Change, the panel members included Sarine CEO David Block, alongside Bernold Richerzhagen, founder and CEO of Synova, Faried Sallie, Head of Technology at De Beers Group and Tom Moses, Executive Vice President and Chief of Laboratory and Research at GIA.
During the discussion, the panel touched on the ways that technology is changing the processes of diamond manufacturing and diamond grading, and whether technology is expected to take over many or all of the manual tasks throughout the diamond supply chain.
Diamond manufacturing has essentially already been revolutionised by technology over the past 20 years, much through Sarine’s contributions in areas such as rough diamond evaluation, including automated modelling and scanning for inclusions, rough diamond planning, advanced laser cutting, etc, which have improved both the quality of the polished stones as well as overall yields, reduced risk and shortened production times.
Use of technology and automation is already prevalent among midstream manufacturers. Synova’s recently announced development portends the fully automated faceting of a polished stone, and may, eventually, allow for truly automated production lines requiring little to no human intervention.
As for the diamond grading industry, Sarine’s CEO pointed out that it is not a matter of “if”, but “when” and how rapidly technology will manifestly replace manual grading processes. Automated, AI-based grading supports levels of accuracy and repeatability that are not possible with manual grading.
The technology already exists and is rapidly improving. The current process of diamond grading is complex and cumbersome, prone to error and requires diamantaires to disrupt their inventory flow and outsource their finished goods to an external lab for grading, driving up both direct and indirect costs.
