Evaluating And Optimizing The Effectiveness Of Mining Equipment;the Case Of Chibuluma South Underground Mine

The Load Haul Dump(LHD)equipment and its operating environment create a complex system in the mining industry.Mine productivity depends on the operation of the LHDs and on the mining environment,including fragmentation,size of boulders,navigation techniques etc.The effectiveness of mining equipment is a huge challenge in mining which affects mining companies' competitive advantage in the global mining sector.Traditional navigation techniques require a lot of infrastructure to accommodate automatic operation.From fully automated fleets of vehicles,the focus of automation has gradually widened to include more flexible solutions,such as semi-automatic LHD machines,with safety as a main goal.It is therefore,very important for the mining industry to utilize its intensive equipment with proper measurements.Several issues must be resolved to maximize the benefits of automation.One is to improve the maintenance strategy,especially preventive maintenance,as it is crucial to avoid the loss of time incurred by unplanned breakdowns.Another issue is the complexity of the mining environment;external disturbances such as oversized boulders,road maintenance etc.which can throw the entire investment of automation into question.The purpose of this thesis is to develop an algorithm using Rstudio software which will be scientifically used to determine and evaluate the sensitive inputs to the life cycle of mining equipment as well as determine and analyze the Overall Equipment Effectiveness(OEE)as a measure to use in evaluating and optimizing the effectiveness of mining equipment.Research methods include a literature review,unstructured interviews,and data collection and integration.Reliability analysis,life cycle cost analysis,equipment production efficiency analysis,equipment availability and utilization analysis were all performed to comparatively analyze the performance of LHDs.This thesis presents an approach to evaluate the performance of LHD equipment.It describes the maintenance procedures of automatic LHD machines.It includes a study of the most sensitive inputs to the equipment life cycle such as process cycle times,utilization,maintainability,performance and production efficiencies of drill rigs,loaders and dump trucks.The model developed in this paper is an algorithm with code that's reproducible and reusable with a few changes of variables for an underground mine.The algorithm uses equipment operational records for effective planning and optimizing of mine production operations.The algorithm was validated in the fact that the trends of the sensitive inputs to the equipment life cycle were determined.The overall equipment effectiveness was found to be below 50 percent for all the three types of equipment.