Hitachi Consulting, a subsidiary of Hitachi Ltd. and a leading provider of IT consulting and management consulting solutions and services, announced that it is teaming with Wenco International Mining Systems to offer a new joint service for pit operations.
This is in response to clients’ interest in learning how their operations compare and contrast with their peers, and establishing guidelines on which parts of the operations they should improve, according to Hitachi. The service includes a maturity assessment of the overall pit dispatch/fleet management operation against an industry benchmark, as well as an improvement support service to help pit operations teams raise their overall performance.
The dispatch operations maturity assessment tool provides sites with a prioritized list of improvement activities to improve pit operations. The assessment is not limited to any particular brand of fleet management system software or mobile equipment.
The dispatch operations maturity improvement service offers a configurable support service to mine support teams to improve the activities that inhibit overall production performance. Clients have the choice of selecting specific services to complement their own internal capabilities.
The assessment and improvement services allow companies to address one or more of eight key aspects of pit operations optimization: 1) measurement systems, 2) fleet management software systems, (3) data quality, (4) dispatch function management, (5) shift operations management, (6) pit operations optimization, (7) asset reliability management and (8) integration with downstream processes.
“Pit operations are dynamic environments that are really hard to keep optimized,” said Gerhard van Niekerk, vice-president of metals and mining at Hitachi Consulting. “Due to this complex environment, knowing which parts of the operation are inhibiting the overall pit performance still relies on perceptions today.
“Holistic operational assessments like ours make it possible for operations management to know where to focus effort to improve shift operations, asset productivity, and, consequently, increase production output,” he added.
