Performance Assessment of Open Pit Mine Equipments by OEE Application

In the past decades, open pit mines have tremendously increased their production to many folds by employing larger equipments which require huge capital investment. In recent time low commodity prices compelled companies to decrease their operating cost by improving productivity. Utilization of capital intensive equipments is of paramount importance as effectively as possible to improve productivity. Therefore, the accurate estimation of equipment effectiveness is very important so that its performance can be increased. Overall Equipment Effectiveness (OEE) is a well-known measurement method used in manufacturing industry which combines availability, performance and quality, for the evaluation of equipment effectiveness. This evaluation method can be extended for major open pit mining equipments such as shovels and trucks. This paper will deal with the application of OEE to measure effectiveness of mining equipment so that availability and utilization can be matched. It identifies the causes of time losses for shovel and truck operations and introduces procedure to record time losses. A field study is undertaken to estimate OEE of shovels and trucks in an open pit mine. From analysis of the results, suitable conclusions are drawn to improve OEE.