Performance Appraisal of Equipments in Opencast Mines

Abstract

Mining is a very capital-intensive industry, and it is well known fact that the equipment availability and precise estimation of this utilization are very important since mine managers want to utilize their equipment as effectively as possible to get an early return on their investments as well reducing total production cost. While a lot of thrust is put on the selection of mining equipments not much consideration is paid towards the measurement of effectiveness of those equipments. The increase in automation, compounded by the increase in the size and capacity of equipment over the years has drastically changed the consequences of equipment ineffectiveness. In the present economic conditions, severe global competition, challenges of environmental and safety considerations, in order to achieve high production and productivity of HEMMs in opencast mines, it is pertinent to have high % availability and % utilization of equipments besides ensure overall equipment effectiveness vis-à-vis established CMPDI norms/global bench marks. This necessitates performance appraisal of various equipments in highly mechanized OCPs, critically analyze the idle/down time of equipments and take ameliorative measures to improve machine productivity and performance. OEE is a hierarchy of matrices which evaluate and indicates how effectively a production operation is utilized The project work was carried out with the following objectives:  To estimate % availability, % utilization and analyze idle hours of Dragline (10/70) at Belpahar OCP and Sameleswari OCP. To determine Overall Equipment Effectiveness (OEE) of Dragline and Surface Miner at BOCP and SOCP.