Journals Proceedings

Abstract

Automation is known as one of the most powerful tools for enhancing the mine productivity and safety. Automated mining machineries are so complex and capital intensive assets which need comprehensive maintenance, support and logistic planning to be able to meet their desired production goals. There are several technical, operational and safety challenges in the maintenance of this kind of machinery which force the mining companies to take the advanced solutions for increasing the maintenance quality and reducing the downtimes as much as possible. In this paper firstly the various automation modes of mining machinery are reviewed briefly. Thereafter, regarding to literature review and some field observation, three maintenance challenges are presented and discussed: safety of maintenance crew, maintenance big data and asset integration problems in mine automation systems. Considering the operational difficulties and safety issues the intelligent Reliability Centered Maintenance (iRCM) and eMaintenance as two advanced applicable methods are recommended for maintenance improvement in automated mining machinery.