Coal Mine AHS Implementation

A 26% increase in production achieved through TROC Support Team with automation capability being critical to the successful delivery of AHS.

The Challenge:

The organisation commenced piloting of Caterpillar’s autonomous truck solution in 2013 starting with 6 trucks, ramping up the pilot to 25 trucks by 2017. The organisation committed to full AHS production from July 2017 ramping up to 48 trucks by 2018. This transition required several months of preparation. Shortly after the fully autonomous site went live, an unexpected challenge emerged in the form of a wireless network outage within hours of operation. Over an 18 month duration, recurrent P1 and P2 OT wireless network issues besieged the system, resulting in prolonged and frequent downtimes totalling over 10hrs.

The Solution:

• To resolve the ongoing downtime issues, a 24/7 remote support function led by technology specialists was established across a 12 week program. By implementing newly developed routines and processes, coupled with adopting a systems mindset and comprehensive understanding of constraints, the TROC support teams were able to identify numerous contributory factors.
• Automation production performance increased significantly from May 2018 once the newly formed IT-OT team addressed network performance and automation capabilities were fully embedded in the business. Performance continually improved on a year-on-year basis.
• The enhancement of network availability and reduction of truck stoppages resulted in an uplift of annualised operational hours from approximately 5000 hours to 6200 hours, representing a 26% increase in production.

Key Lessons Learned:

• Our experience implementing automation shows that without automation capability in the owner’s team, the pilot and program will not be set up successfully to deliver value in the expected timeframe