VGK creates a system for monitoring the productivity of mining equipment

2021: Development and Implementation of Mining Performance Tracking Software

As part of a large-scale project to digitalize all production processes Eastern Mining Company , she began to develop her own software Pulse for operational monitoring of the current situation in terms of the performance of each unit mining of equipment on the Solntsevsky coal mine in online mode. This was announced on June 16, 2021 in the Supreme High Command.

The developers of the Pulse program are specialists from the Eastern Mining Company and the Solntsevsky coal mine. As a result, it was possible to determine the current production needs and create a convenient interface taking into account real tasks. In total, over 20 people work on the creation of the program. In test mode, the Pulse system on the section has been launched since March 2021.

When creating a Pulse program, a cascading approach is used. At the first stage, specialists of the Solntsevsky coal mine formed key requirements for the program, based on the peculiarities of the production process. At the second stage, IT and digital specialists joined the product development. Since March, the software has been tested for its effectiveness in real production conditions of the section. The third stage is the testing of the created software. For this, the practice of the "Single Day of Dispatching" was introduced on the Solntsevsky coal mine, within the framework of which an "ideal working shift" was organized with the active use of Pulse. This made it possible to identify the strengths of the program and identify areas for refinement. Also, as part of the "single day of dispatching," the program was tested by dispatchers for its convenience as part of a working shift.

"It was a productive experience for all participants. We saw the maximum work of the control room in practice when using the created program. We analyzed the reaction to possible emergency situations. We have identified which additional management decisions and organizational resources can be applied. Based on their analysis, additional algorithms will be developed to increase the speed of response, "said Andrei Dorogov, head of the VGK development team.

The main goal of creating the program was the need to control the quality of the working process of mining equipment: indicating events by downtime, overloads, underbursts, increasing the load cycle time of the dump truck. For example, earlier in the control room there was data on the simple or operation of equipment. It was not possible to gradate the quality of work and the degree of influence of various factors. The Pulse program solved this problem by displaying the status of each unit of equipment involved in the production process on the dispatcher's monitor.

Excavators were the first to enter the program, then dump trucks. The created system implies an expanded functionality for dispatching control in order to quickly identify emerging problems and quickly eliminate them. Using the key event monitor created within the program, the manager online monitors the production situation on the section, identifying possible deviations and takes the necessary actions to resolve them. The information on the monitor is updated every 20-30 seconds. Also, with the help of a special classification program, the manager indicates the cause of the problem, which entailed a decrease in performance. Automatically, all information on the result of the shift goes into operational management reporting.

The system is already actively used by managers of the Solntsevsky coal mine. In parallel, it is filled with the necessary additional modules in order to increase the efficiency of mining equipment.