MIDLANDS STATE UNIVERSITY

HMINE 520
Fifth Year Project
TITLE: OPTIMISATION OF A MIXED / HETEROGENOUS TRUCK FLEET THROUGH UTILISATION, USING STOCHASTIC
SIMULATION AND VISUAL BASIC CONTROL ROOM -PICKSTONE PEERLESS CASE STUDY
By
TAONGA SIMARI (R179691E)
Supervisor – Eng L.PaChawo

 
A project proposal submitted to the Department of Metallurgical and Materials Engineering. Faculty of Mining and
Mineral Processing Engineering in partial fulfilment of the requirements for Bachelor of Engineering Honours Degree
in Mining Engineering.
 
Zvishavane
JUNE 2022
Research Background

• Pickstone peerless gold mine faced serious production problems because of low mechanical availability of
machines. The mine decided to replace all the absolute equipment with newer equipment and they contacted the
supplier of earth moving machines CAT company. All the machines which had SMR of 40 000hrs where
replaced, and these machines constituted half of the fleet. The mine had a fleet of 12 CAT 773e dump trucks ,4
CAT 390Fl backhoe excavators and support machines. The mine released 5 CAT 773e rigid dump trucks, 3
CAT 390FL back hoe excavators and received 12 CAT 740B certified used articulated dumb trucks (ADT) , 3
CAT 374F back hoe excavators.
•The dump trucks replacements have same capacity. An in-depth into the problem showed queuing and bunching
contributed to longer truck cycle times hence low tuck utilisation. the load and hauling production report is
compiled after 3 weeks of operation for analyses. the production review after 3 weeks of operation is not
conducive for fleet utilization micromanagement. the lack of a production control room has caused slowed
implementation of production solutions. most of the implemented solutions are rigid e.g the matching factor and
there are not fully tracked since production review is done after 3 weeks which has caused the solutions not to
reach full intuition.
 Problem statement
• Pickstone peerless gold mine faced productivity shortfall problem on
loading and hauling due to low equipment utilization.
Justification

• Average truck availability is 80% and Utilization 72%.

• The mine is losing approximately $1 829.00 per day in Over trucking
Objectives

 Investigating deviations of hauling cycle parameters from ideal for

every pit section and corresponding haul path.
 Creating a bases for truck configuration with maximum truck
utilization for every pit section .
 Cost benefit analyses of solution.
Methodology
Methodology
• Data collection
a) Field study - Motion study
b) Desktop study - Ideal cycle time using Civil suite 2021
• Data analyses – comparing truck ideal cycle time values from civil suite and
actual cycle times through graphs.
• Optimization using the stochastic poison process i.e. queuing theory
• Low budget excel based control room for tracking equipment utilisation
• Cost benefit analyses
 Results and Analyses

• Civil Suite 2021 haul simulation

• Analyses of cycle time distribution

• Queuing model –M/M/C-FIFO-KK

• The graphs are plotted and graphs with strong correlation i.e. R2 >
0.5 it is approved
• Queuing model –M/M/1-FIFO-
KK ,Finite
 Optimum truck solution
Path Truck type Shovel type Optimum truck fleet size Average waiting time Utilisation of shovel Truck loads / hr Unit cost $/bcm
at the shovel

Peo3 to waste dump CAT 740B CAT 374F 6 5.54 93.37% 11 1.54

Peo3 to rompad CAT 740B CAT 6 5.12 95.33% 12 1.52

374F
11
Peo1 to waste dump CAT CAT 6 5.89 96.33% 2.54
773E 390FL  
12
Peo1 to rompad CAT CAT 390FL 6 4.62 93.76% 2.00
740B

Foot ball field to CAT CAT 4 2.2 93.56% 16 1.86

rompad 740B 374FL

Football field to CAT CAT 4 2.2 87.79% 14 1.98

waste dump 740B 374FL
Visual basic Control room
• Dashboard
Cost Benefit Analyses
COSTS BENEFITS
1) Labor 1) Trucks –reduced from 19 to 16
• 3 control room operators- $600.0 Money saved from 3 trucks on standby
• $355.96 + $ 753.94 = $1 109.9
2) Control room setup
2) Instant production review from the
• Monitor – hp satellite E68 corei3 dashboards
$340.00
• MOTOTRBO™ DM4000 SERIES TWO-
WAY RADIO -$1400.00

Total cost = $2000.00

Conclusions And Recommendations
• The ultimate truck solution and the control room reduced fleet size from 19 to 16 trucks operating
and utilisation increased by 9% and this saved $1 109.9 per hour of haulage trucks and still
achieving 4448 482 .822 Bcms per month. Trucks productivity increased from 1.65 average loads
per hour to 2 loads
• Use of a homogenous truck fleet
• Recommend setting up of a dispatch control room based on cat product link
• Cat Product Link allows remote monitoring of the Dumb Truck to improve overall fleet-
management Effectiveness. Product Link is deeply integrated into machine systems. Events and
diagnostic codes, As well as hours, fuel, idle time and other detailed information are transmitted to
a secure web based Application
References
•[1] Ning Li 1,2,* , Shuzhao Feng 1,*, Haiwang Ye 1,2, Qizhou Wang 1,2,*, Mingtao Jia 3, “Dispatch
Optimization Model for Haulage Equipment between,” Metals, vol. 11, no. 1848, pp. 1-21, 2021.
•[2] K. Teknomo, “Queuing Rule of Thumb based on M/M/s Queuing Theory with,” Civil Engineering
Dimension, vol. 14, no. 3, pp. 139-146, 2012.
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Mining and Metallurgy, vol. 107, pp. 221-224, 2007.
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Institute of Mining and Metallurgy, vol. 109, pp. 433-439, 2009.
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Emerging Trends in Engineering Research, vol. 8, no. 10, pp. 7099-7144, 2020.
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no. 2, pp. 42-45, 2016.
•[7] R. T. Piyush Rai, Indian Joumat of Engineering & Materials Scienccs, vol. 6, pp. 153-157, 1999.
•[8] A. Sheikh, “Application of Queuing Theory for Effective Equipment Utilization andMaximization of
Productivity in Construction Management,” International Journal of Applied Engineering Research , vol. 11,
no. 8, pp. 5664-55672, 2016.
•[9] D. a. R. B. J. Gransberg, “Cost of Owning and Operating Construction Equipment,” in Construction
Equipment Management for ngineers, Estimators, and Construction Managers, 2nd Edition, texas, Taylor
and Francis Books, Inc, 2020, p. 331.
•[10] T. Z. S. M. A. Myo Min Lwin, “DETERMINATION OF OPTIMUM SHOVEL-TRUCK COMBINATION SYSTEM
FOR QUARRY PROJECT OF AAA CEMENT FACTORY BYUSING THE QUEUEING THEORY APPROACH,”
INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL FOR INNOVATIVE RESEARCH IN MULTIDISCIPLINARY FIELD, vol. 5, no. 8, pp. 184-
177, 2019.
 •
•  

•Calculation process will be carried out for different situations within the number of trucks starting from 2 to 7.
• 
•Probability of no/zero units in the system

• 
•Probability of 2 units in the system;
•
•

•
•Mean number of trucks in line for service;
•