Revolutionising autonomous production begins with the 1st Pillar – where success in Autonomous Haulage Systems takes its first exhilarating leap.
After being heavily involved in the autonomous mining industry for over a decade, in both green fields and brown fields AHS deployments, and a huge array of safety and performance projects. We have developed what we believe are three essential pillars for a safe productive AHS mining operation.
In this article I would like to expand further on the first pillar and the role it plays in building the required success.
AHS Mining Processes:
This pillar is not something that needs to happen when the new autonomous trucks roll in through the gates. In fact, a lot of these points that will be discussed herein are totally relevant and applicable to a manual mining operation. We feel these mining processes should be reviewed and scrutinised long before AHS is turned on. It is a great opportunity for a mining operation to look inwardly at their current operation’s efficiency profile and begin to understand how AHS will have an impact on that, because without any shadow of a doubt, it will, and I guarantee it will be quite a large and confronting impact to daily operations and process.
In nearly all AHS deployments, it’s not clearly understood the requirements and adjustments AHS needs to make it perform to their expectations until many years after the first trucks have had the key turned to auto. How much lost production does that cost a mining company?
Below are some examples of daily mining process and tasks that need to be scrutinised and adjusted to compliment autonomous mining operations:
-Drill & blast technique and sequencing
-Operator hand over processes
-Support equipment logistics
-Dump management processes
-Mine planning processes
-Wall batter cleaning process
-Operations optimal daily task KPIs
-Crusher queuing and stockpile strategies
-Pit improvement audit processes
-Mine design processes
Now there are too many to go into in this one article, but these are examples of daily operations that will need to be refined and, in some cases, developed to complement AHS operations. In our opinion the more of these operations that can be developed and embedded before an autonomous truck is released will greatly reduce the large impact AHS mining has on an unsuspecting mine site.
Over the years Absolute Autonomous has created and refined all the necessary mining processes to complement autonomous mining across many different and diverse mining conditions. BUT the creation and roll out of these important changes doesn’t end once they are embedded. Culture and leadership play a very important part to make sure KPIs are being met, refinements being made to accommodate new functionalities and different geographical changes and constraints.
As you can understand successfully integrating AHS into a long-standing mining operation, so it has the potential to reach maximum performance and productivity requires a lot of adjustments not only with the physical mining areas, but also the daily operating processes of the many involved mining departments, and this brings me to my last point.
Mining just like many sports is a team effort. Unless all mining processes both new and old are complimenting the autonomous trucks then they are only detracting from the greater good of the whole mining operation. The payoff for getting these mining processes right and having a solid set of KPIs behind them is huge, and will make any mining manager smile.
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