Key Benefits
The following tables illustrate immediate and ongoing key benefits of Acqumine’s solution.
Problem | Current process | Acqumine’s improvement |
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Low skill levels, AIDS, poor working conditions, low wages, alcoholism | Attempts to keep environment controlled. Little in the way of on-the-job guidance or monitoring. |
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Unplanned rockfalls in deep level mines | Occasional use of seismographs (At $6k they are expensive). Plotters used & data not collected or analysed |
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Unauthorised use of equipment, driving in unauthorised areas/over speeding | Fewer than 10% of primary and virtually no secondary vehicles have Dallas Touch Key. Smaller utility vehicles have basic tracking systems. Mainly controlled by manual intervention. |
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Uncontrolled gas leakages | Gas monitors are only checked periodically, usually once per shift. |
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Poor visibility, blind spots on large vehicles, dust | 260 degree blind spots are common on large vehicles weighing 300 tonnes. Graders and water trucks are manually dispatched, when road condition is bad and excessive dust results. No scientific processes currently used. |
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Problem | Current process | Acqumine’s improvement |
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Driver abuse – conflicts of interest between OEM’s & mines | OEMS seldom install own engine protection systems, as their absence results in lucrative aftersales revenue. The alerts from current engine protection systems stay in the cab. |
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Missed scheduled maintenance, delayed response to equipment failure | Production pressures result in avoidance of routine maintenance. Friction between engineering and production increases the risk of unplanned downtime. Maintenance schedules are manual. Onboard systems tend to be diagnostic, rather than preventative. For instance Bell’s Fleetm@tic only emails the control room two hours after occurrence. |
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Under/overloading | < 10% of PRIMARY fleets collect loading data as miners argue loads average out. BUT under-loading results in lost production while overloading causes vehicle damage. |
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Fuel theft | 5-10% of purchased fuel is stolen – no mining vehicles have fuel level sensors. |
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Badly graded roads cause metal fatigue, tyre damage | There are no controls on road condition apart from visual inspection by managers, except in the very most advanced systems. |
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Problem | Current process | Acqumine’s improvement |
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Unskilled worker motivation, unions & incongruent productivity targets | Workers are paid badly – 50% receive less than £300 per month, but do get bonuses based on production only. Therefore they are incentivised to ignore engine health warning ignore: Worker getsa £5 shift bonuses but only to blow a £500k engine. |
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Routing confusion, unbalanced fleets, bottlenecks from unplanned downtime | Most open caste & all underground mines have no automated decision support. Basic dispatching algorithms are available but are seldom run more than once daily, and which are rendered useless by unforeseen events. |
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Lack of real-time communication – especially underground | A shift report is a statutory requirement, but is usually written by hand and inexpertly captured in later days. Verbal communication underground is difficult & expensive wit Leaky Feeder providing low bandwidth. |
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Grade control | Currently estimated based on geological data and often only be reconciled on a monthly basis. Achieving a grade within narrow tolerances increases the sales value. |
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Drilling & blasting not according to plan | Mines use different location systems, confusing co-ordinates, and drilling ends to be outsourced, with location and depth not checked against plan. |
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