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...

Many studies have been carried out and many commercial software applications have been developed to improve the performances of surface mining operations, especially for the loader-trucks cycle of surface mining. However, there have been quite few studies aiming to improve the mining process of underground mines. In underground mines, mobile mining equipment is mostly scheduled instinctively, w...

In internet based Virtual Hospital for power equipment, it is not easy to use the rules of power equipment fault diagnosis from the resources by traditional exoert system. Data mining technique opens a new window for the utilization of the abundant and chaotic data in VH. In this paper, the clustering rule and Radial Basis Function Neural Network based data mining fault diagnosis method for pow...

Given the large expenditures on capital equipment characteristic of mining, technology developers and users alike place a very high priority on improving equipment productivity. Proper maintenance is essential to maximizing both availability and productivity. At the same time, maintenance services are a major cost element of all mine operations.1 Accordingly, after process optimization, equipme...

While the cost of machinery used in mining has been increasing—especially for metals and coal producers facing thin or negative profit margins—the cost of information has been falling, creating opportunities to use IT to optimize the use of mining equipment and boost returns on investment. Accordingly, observed one participant, technologies to monitor and optimize mining operations are making “...

This paper presents an extended literature review of the human factors impacts of current and future automation in the minerals industry. It begins by defining what is automation and stating why it is being developed and deployed. It then outlines why it is important to consider operators and maintainers when designing and deploying mining automation. To put mining automation into context, less...

One of the challenging problems for surface mining operation optimization is choosing the optimal truck and loader fleet. This problem is the Equipment Selection Problem (ESP). In this paper, we describe the ESP in the context of surface mining. We discuss related problems and applications. Within the scope of both the ESP and related problems, we outline modeling and solution approaches. Using...

This paper focuses on value co-creation in the context of cyber-physical systems (CPSs). We investigate how value is co-created in the mining and construction industry, where the intelligent equipment are examples of CPSs. We take an interpretive research approach and study a global corporation, which manufactures tools and equipment for the mining and construction industry. The data collection...

Over the past decade, a substantial effort has been made to improve the air quality inside enclosed cabs of both underground and surface mobile mining equipment to reduce respirable dust exposures by the equipment operators. As part of this effort, the U.S. National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health, (NIOSH) completed a comprehensive laboratory study that determined the significant f...