IM 2020 June 20 | Page 5
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THE LEADER VOLUME 15 • NUMBER 6
Teleremote turnaround
old Fields’ problems at South Deep have been
well documented, with the company, in 2018,
Glaunching a restructuring plan involving the
reduction of mining areas, the lowering of overhead
costs and an aim to use fewer machines more
productively. This followed significant amounts of
investment and continued underperformance at the
mine.
As part of plans to establish a sustainable footing
for the mine, in the Witwatersrand Basin of South
Africa, Gold Fields is trialling teleremote loading in a
project with automation specialist RCT. This should
help it achieve that latter productivity goal.
In the June quarter of 2019, Gold Fields commenced
non-line of site remote loading training at South Deep.
Phase one of the project was to locate the operator
control station near the underground loading site,
according to the company.
Martin Preece, Executive Vice-President Gold Fields
South Africa, said soon after this training started,
operators suggested an almost immediate move to
“Phase 2” with an operator control station located in a
recently built surface control centre in the main
building at South Deep.
A surface automation chair was ordered from RCT,
installed and commissioned in the centre and the
company started the process of training up operators.
RCT’s ControlMaster ® Automation and Control
solutions enable companies to automate a single
machine, to a fully autonomous fleet, while also
offering step changes with teleremote solutions that
allow operators to take control of machines from
control centres, trailer cabins or mobile stations. They
are also fully interoperable.
Gold Fields’ approach with all technology is to trial
with limited application, to develop and prove the
technology, followed by rapid roll out, according to
Preece. It was no different with this project.
“We are still in the first phase of the project and are
learning and adapting our approach as we progress to
perfect the system before broader application,” he
said.
This first phase already has the company using one
Sandvik LH514 LHD for teleremote loading operations
in the long-hole stope loading areas of South Deep
during shift changes. As Preece explained, the RCT
technology allows for the LHD to tram between loading
and dumping locations, and back autonomously with
operator intervention only required when loading and
tipping the LHD.
RCT has provided the on-board sensor technology,
the network infrastructure in the working areas, the
safety application, and the surface operating chair –
the Operation Automation Centre – located in the
surface control centre, he said.
The control centre was designed and established by
South Deep and hosts the teleremote LHD operator
automation centre, a teleremote rock breaker station,
the operations control room, maintenance, and
production scheduling as well as business reporting
functions.
This teleremote loading technology is, essentially,
adding loaded tonnes to the operation where there
previously was none, coming close to ticking off the
‘use of fewer machines more productively’ criteria Gold
Fields previously set out in its turnaround plan.
“The success of any change intervention is to ensure
that the application becomes an enabler rather than a
distraction for our frontline teams,” Preece said. “We
would like to believe we are close to operational
deployment. Most of the initial challenges experienced
with the technology itself have been addressed; the
underground mining team is taking ownership by
addressing the operating conditions. Furthermore, a
second round of operator and maintenance training
has been conducted.”
While the trial is currently limited to long-hole stope
loading in between shift
changes, in time, teleremote
loading in development and
destress areas of the mine
could also be possible, Preece
said. With plans to equip more
machines in 2020, the results
could get even better.
“The project business case
is based on being able to
continue loading over shift
changes, so there is further upside when we add in the
in-shift productivity gains as well as improvements to
the development and destress mining cycles,” he said.
“Our approach to expanding the rollout is that it must
be self-funding – the value generated by the first
deployment must fund the rollout of subsequent
deployments.”
The company’s ultimate goal is to be able to operate
LHDs continuously for 22 hours a day (the limit the
machine can safely operate between refuelling, safety
inspections and pre-start inspections, according to
Preece), but there is more to achieving this aim than
just rolling out teleremote LHDs.
“A pre-requisite for loading during shift changes is
to be able to break big rocks in the tipping bins,”
Preece said. This is where the successful deployment
of teleremote rock breaking, operated from the same
surface control centre as the remote LHDs, comes in.
Then there are the interactions with other
equipment and, most importantly, people to consider.
“When operating the teleremote machine, the whole
area has to be barricaded, isolated and protected by
laser barriers, which, if breached, force the machine to
stop automatically,” he said. “This will limit the
application to areas which we can isolate.”
In areas where personnel are required to perform
drilling, supporting, backfilling and other activities, the
area cannot be completely isolated and the LHD cannot
function optimally, according to Preece.
This might not be the case indefinitely.
“South Deep is exploring opportunities to schedule
activities separately to enable broader application,”
Preece said.
Similar technology deployed for trucks would be
another future area of focus, according to Preece, while
he said the mine was also in the early stages of trialling
automated long-hole drilling in stopes over shift
changes.
Even though South Deep is one of the deepest
mines in the world – going to depths close to 3,000 m
below surface – the depth of mining is not one of the
main business drivers for the increased take up of
teleremote operations, according to Preece.
“Safety benefits and the time a machine can
effectively be utilised make up for the bulk of the
return on investment,” he said. “The challenge with
deeper mines are on the support side; if the network
infrastructure is in place, it should be the same for
shallow or deep mines. For deeper mines, it will take
longer to get maintenance and instrumentation
support to the machine if something goes wrong.”
Still, could full automation be on the cards?
“Yes! Loading activity remains the most challenging
given the variable fragmentation of material,” Preece
said. “Operators still need to perform the loading and
tipping activities.”
These teleremote and automation projects, on top of
personnel and mobile equipment tracking systems
previously mentioned in the company’s 2019 annual
report, bode well for future automation take up at
South Deep, as well as the success of Gold Fields’
turnaround plan for the asset.
Daniel Gleeson
Editor
[email protected]
JUNE 2020 | International Mining 3