Modern Mining July 2019

COVER STORY

“We started looking at developing process improvement tools such as OptiMine ® Short Interval Control Modules which initially focused on basic telemetry on equipment, as well as productivity, alarm alert reports and task scheduling,” McCoy explains. “This then evolved into how to mine better with scheduling and task management systems and the subsequent introduction of OptiMine ® Scheduling and OptiMine ® Task Management, which enable communication between people and equipment underground with a central control centre on the surface. This allows tasks and their progress to be managed in real time with decisions able to be made immediately should productivity targets not be met. “Our next area of focus was to enable users to visualise operations and this led to the development of OptiMine ® 3D Mine Visualiser, a powerful system that allows users to visu- ally check that equipment is in the right area and facilitate traffic management. It also allows operators at the beginning of a shift to find the location of their equipment and do a thorough status check – rather than relying on informa- tion passed on from the previous shift.” Further development The next step says McCoy was to bring insights and predictions to market and allow proactive management of operations. “Our OptiMine ® Analytics tool provides predic- tions, pre-warnings of potential equipment failures or production problems. The intro- duction of OptiMine ® Analytics provides data analysis and predictive insights of equipment and Overall Equipment Efficiency (OEE). OEE takes into account internal and external factors, such as how equipment and operators perform, engineering and mining delays, as well as how well the equipment is used vs original planned available time,” he explains. To take this to the next level, interoperabil- ity is required to get information off several software systems for predictive insights. This includes computerised maintenance man- agement systems, HR clocking systems, breakdown reporting systems, SCADA systems and OptiMine ® Short Interval control modules among others. “Interoperability of the Sandvik system means that information from these systems can then be drawn to the cloud for analysis and represented on appropriate dashboards for viewing. It allows customers to view shifts and make decisions based on available human and equipment resources for more productive shifts,” says McCoy.

Above: An OptiMine® control room. OptiMine® is a modular set of digital tools from Sandvik delivering transparency and control to underground mining operations. Left: A Sandvik TH663i truck (in the background) is loaded by a Sandvik LH621i intelligent 21-tonne loader.

July 2019  MODERN MINING  19