Performance evaluation of near real-time condition monitoring in haul trucks

Abstract

Strategic maintenance plays a key role in ensuring high availability and utilization of the haul trucks, and as equipment began to grow more complex towards the end of the 20th century, there was a need for a proactive maintenance strategy, which led to the development of condition-based maintenance. Real-time condition monitoring (RTCM) is the ability to perform condition monitoring in real-time and has the ability to alert maintenance and operations of abnormal conditions. These alarms can be used as an indication leading to a problem, and if a suitable corrective action is initiated in time, it could result in significant savings of equipment downtime and repair costs. This study aims to compare some maintenance performance indicators prior to and after implementation of RTCM strategy at a mine site using some tests of statistical significance. The study also indicated the presence of seasonality in the data, and thus the data was deseasonalized and detrended prior to being subjected to the statistical tests. Finally, the results indicated that RTCM strategy has proven to be successful in improving the availability for some of the failure categories chosen in this study.

Keywords

• Haul trucks
• Real-time condition monitoring
• Performance indicators