Raise operational safety and efficiency by monitoring mobile equipment operator’s behavior

2015

Jean-Phillip Bouchard (ISAAC Instruments)

Making sustainable changes with an impact on safety and efficiency is a challenge, especially for underground mixed equipment mining fleets. Going beyond the identification of issues, to clearly diagnose root causes, requires precise and irrefutable data. This presentation discusses how vehicle telemetry can help raise operational safety and efficiency through the monitoring of operator behavior. A short case study will be presented to show how a major mining company met the challenge of producing standardized reports and indicators across their mixed fleets. Used for many years in motorsport racing and freight transport, vehicle telemetry allows for continuous feedback and training of operators, which increases their accountability and helps them improve skills. Pre-inspection safety check, over speeding, overloading, workflow bottleneck identification, and incident reconstruction are some examples of the information vehicle telemetry can provide. This actionable business intelligence allows for proactive decision making, and leads to safe, non-abusive and efficient practices, therefore reducing the number of incidents and improving equipment availability and net utilization. The presenter will explain how a scalable solution using a centralized database for benchmarking allows to connect teams and share the know-how and best practices developed in one mining site throughout the organization.

Keywords: equipment availability, equipment utilisation, efficient practices, mixed fleet, vehicle telemetry, operator behavior, underground mining, safety