A mining company operating a global network of mines
Key Challenges
The company’s equipment, including manned and autonomous trucks, bolters, drillers, shovels, and scoops, registered 50%+ under-utilization due to the lack of visibility into availability and performance of assets. In addition, fleet maintenance cost was high – 40%-60% of operating costs.
The mining enterprise required a centralized system with a scalable and robust architecture to boost operational efficiency and maximize return on investment. The business imperative: a holistic online fleet management system with several modules –
- Tracking solution to monitor the status of vehicles operating in underground mines from remote locations
- Application to collect, store and analyze operating parameters - ~ 300 MB data per day per equipment
- Asset maintenance solution to monitor vehicle performance, predict issues, and prevent failure
- Standardized dashboard to provide near real-time visibility and shift-wise reports on assets
- Decision support system to help supervisors undertake situational analysis and make informed decisions for managing operations and contracts
- Simulation tools to undertake event analysis and incident playback for safe operations
- Analytical tools to identify the root cause of operational / maintenance issues and improve performance as well as utilization
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Benefits
Near real-time visibility into performance indicators and asset-specific analytics
Infosys addressed the requirements of the mining company with an advanced vehicle telematics solution. We combined the Infosys Information Platform with Hadoop storage, Spark / Hive functions, R analytics engine, web visualization tools, and statistical modeling in the solution. The extendable architecture facilitated global deployment across assets from diverse mining and industrial equipment manufacturers, including Caterpillar, Komatsu, Atlas Copco, and MacLean Engineering.
Data acquisition
Infosys partnered with Cisco to install a wireless sensor network at underground mining sites for uninterrupted streaming of asset data and monitoring of critical parameters. We mounted a telemetry device on each vehicle to log and transfer live data from the Wi-Fi-enabled underground infrastructure to the remote command center. The Infosys Information Platform ingests fleet telemetry data and shares it with the event processing and analytical engines.
Data consumption
The event analysis engine processes inbound data and monitors fleet performance indicators such as cycle times, speed, acceleration, and braking. It identifies Load-Haul-Dump (LHD) events and presents trend views / analytical reports that help fleet managers better manage operations. The Infosys event engine processes data three times faster than traditional models for event calculations.
Our solution applies big data analytics to mine business insights for operations, materials movement and safety incidents. It evaluates patterns in fleet telemetry and sensor data to correlate diverse operational issues – fuel consumption and maintenance events, driver behavior and fuel consumption, fleet maintenance and accident rate, etc.
Data display
Infosys developed an intuitive dashboard to manage and report mining operations, vehicle utilization, fleet performance, and safety incidents.
The menu enables users to select the date and shift, parameter and machine to compare and analyze performance across timelines, variables and LHD events. Asset / fleet summary reports can be exported in different file formats including Comma-Separated Values (CSV) and Microsoft Excel, and printed. Authorized users can configure application features such as thresholds for LHD events and color code for event detection.
Our ‘incident playback’ trends chart plots time series data based on user inputs, with minimal latency. It supports normalized trend analysis for event detection across 82 variables. User-controlled plotting features include dual axis, zooming, windowing, panning, and rolling
Near real-time visibility into performance indicators and asset-specific analytics help the mining company improve fleet safety, reduce fuel consumption, and rationalize maintenance costs. Substantive analysis of driver behavior complements training programs to achieve targeted performance.
Moreover, automated tools to calculate quantity of materials handled enables faster inventory reconciliation. Significantly, operational intelligence from our fleet management system guides capital equipment procurement decisions.
