As mines get deeper, conditions get more challenging and shareholder expectations get more demanding, mining companies are under strain to deliver. Industry executive after industry executive knows the answer to this age-old dilemma needs to be the right application of technology.
At RAMJACK Technology Solutions, we offer a range of best-in-class production management and monitoring solutions. Each of these solutions has been designed and built with the harsh mining environment in mind and can be accompanied by unique, custom support services and knowledge transfer programs to ensure you realise the true value of your technology deployment.
Production Management
You can’t improve it if you can’t measure it. Deming said that, and we’ve all quoted him at some point in our careers as mining professionals. The mining industry has embraced the benefits of fleet management systems with advanced dispatch algorithms for the past 30 years. Running a mine – whether on surface or underground – depends heavily on the applicability of the production management system in place. Finding the right system can be difficult, but RAMJACK has the knowledge and experience to help any mine – surface or underground – to navigate the landscape of available Production Management and Short Interval Control systems.
Payload Monitoring
Payload matters. Payload is the name of the game in mining. In fact, just knowing your payload at a moment in time where it can be managed can provide up to a 16% increase in production within only a few months of system implementation.
On surface, mines are seeing the benefits of transitioning from inaccurate and unreliable truck-based payload measuring systems to easier-to-maintain, more reliable and real-time digger-based systems.
Underground, payload monitoring is equally important, and RAMJACK is proud to be among the only companies in the world that can provide completely mixed-fleet compatible payload monitoring systems for LHDs and trucks.
Mine Compliance
The challenge of correctly mining to plan keeps many a surveyor, ore-control engineer and mine planner busy over the course of any given month. Getting it right the first time would save a lot of time and money for everyone involved. Well, technology is available to help.
Underground, comparing as-builts to mine plans has always been difficult because complete volume calculations required major assumptions and estimates based on the few high-accuracy survey points taken from the mining face. Stationary laser scanners gave some glimmer of hope that this could be remedied, but the time consumed by frequent setups, data cleaning and stitching scans together made them impractical and costly. All that has changed with the use of drones and mobile mapping devices.
On surface, updating the dig face with high-precision GPS data as the shovel bucket cuts its way through the muck pile is the best way to monitor mine compliance. Comparing the dynamic dig face to the mine plan – which is uploaded to the shovel operator’s screen – provides a heat-map showing sections of over-dug, under-dug and mined-to-plan areas.