COVER STORY
Real-time fleet and mine management systems in mining
Monitoring the company ’ s activity
in real-time has many assets and advantages not to be ignored . This instant management allows us to visualize and know the real situation of the company as well as to monitor its objectives , key figures and performance indicators ; it facilitates decisionmaking , manages its daily life more effectively and improves its reactivity and competitiveness . Regardless of the structure size , any good manager must be equipped with the appropriate resources to manage his activity effectively . This means that the positioning of carried out actions and committed budgets should be monitored , for both , quantitative and qualitative objectives .
The Fleet Management System ( FMS ) is a term used to refer to a wide range of solutions for different fleet applications in the fields of transport , distribution and logistics . It includes targeted planning , supervision and control of fleet operation ac-cording to available transport resources and application constraints . The FMS aims to reduce risks , increase service quality and improve a fleet ’ s operational efficiency while minimizing costs .
FMS is easy to control and optimize , its foundations date back to the 1980s when the computer was integrated with the vehicle and connected to different wireless networks by satellite and terrestrial . In the mining sector , the main objective of the fleet management system is to optimize mine production and efficiency based on real-time data . More specifically , the FMS aims to maximize mine production , minimize stock handling , feed the processing plant at the planned rate and meet quality mixing constraints .
The implementation of operational research techniques as the main means of addressing the high cost of transporting equipment to mines has attracted researchers and laid the foundation for
FMS used in different types of mining . They considered the FMS as a real-time decision-making system for materials handling in mining . FMS obtains the required information about mining operations from the database and makes decisions accordingly . These decisions are then implemented in the operation and the FMS is recalled whenever a new decision is required .
Commonly , the primary objective of the mine fleet management system is to optimise mine production and efficiency based on real-time data . More specifically , the fleet management system intends to maximise mine production , minimise stockpile rehandle , feed the processing plant at the targeted rate and meet the grade blending constraints .
The common approach is a multistage optimisation , where the solution of each step is used in the next step and where the problem is divided into
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