Capital Equipment News December 2021

tor must be on site but all the other support teams that keep the operation going don’t necessarily need to be on site and this calls for an increase in soft skills training.” He says fleet owners must identify how COVID has affected their businesses and look at what activities have changed and can still change. “Some fleet owners may realise that some activities are now irrelevant. For example, the person counting loads with a manual paper-based system can be replaced by a telematics system like Bell Fleetm@tic, giving you a connected vehicle that can report back on how many loads it tips per day.” That person may have been removed from site because of the headcount allow- ance due to COVID-19 protocols and can now be reskilled in basic computer skills and in how to access and interpret the Bell Fleetm@tic system for the number of loads or tips in a shift. “It’s important to innovate and reskill the people who are no longer on site so that the operation can still achieve the same outcomes – the fleet operator still wants to know how many loads an ADT hauled and how many refuels a machine has had at the end of the day.” He says certain activities can no longer be performed in the same way as pre- COVID-19. Safety meetings, for instance, must now be convened remotely and operators and workers can use apps to be educated on the safety topic for the day. “In South Africa, computer literacy plays an important role in the Fourth Industrial Revolution (4IR),” he says. “Before, a 20 or 30% digitally literate workforce was adequate but now you need close to 100% digital literacy among workers in order to facilitate the adoption of technologies in the future.” The tech revolution According to Van Jaarsveld, the 4IR is based on data and its analysis. “The most fundamental aspect of 4IR is therefore ensuring that we have data available on which to base any analyses. The biggest hurdle to 4IR is unavailability of accurate, quality data.” He says data and its quality depend on people maintaining the infrastructure in- stalled to acquire the data and, secondly, to calibrate the sensors that provide the data to ensure accuracy of the data received – a significant gap in the current workforce. “Strong training regimes in the cap- ital equipment sector focusing on the importance of data, how it is collected and what impact it has on an operation’s overall competitiveness and profitability,

Training at a Bell Equipment facility.

COVID-19 has forced organisations to reduce numbers on ground, and so remove a large part of their first line of defence when it comes to machine maintenance

Strong training regimes in the capital equipment sector focusing on the importance of data, how it is collected and what impact it has on an operation’s overall competitiveness and profitability are critical

Company owners need a different filtered set of data and must be trained in interpreting it and in how the data can be used and applied

Knowledge imparted to individuals is around 10% gained through theoretical training, and 20% gained through coaching and mentoring programmes while the remaining 70% is gained by on-the-job training

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