Improving Performance of Mining Equipment Through Enhancement of Speed Factor: A Case Study (Research Note)

Loading and hauling machineries are highly capital intensive equipment to procure, operate and maintain in surface mining operation. It must be borne in mind that with this huge and capital-intensive equipment, every second of its life time is absolutely important from the production and productivity point of view. As such, it is imperative to optimize the overall cycle time and speed factor of this equipment in order to reap the benefits of this equipment to the fullest extent. Speed factor is the ratio of the planned cycle time of the equipment to the actual cycle time. In this light, the present paper is an endeavour to compute speed factor and critically analyze cycle time segments of dragline operation in one of the major opencast projects in India.