While it has only been a relatively short period of time since advanced equipment simulators were launched in the mining industry, the founding company at the centre of the training revolution, Immersive Technologies, is already moving into the next generation of operator training with strong support from its extensive mining customer base and industry partners.
“After years delivering simulation technologies into the mining and heavy earth moving industry, Immersive Technologies is in a unique position to leverage from the vast knowledge acquired through our global customer base and OEM (Original Equipment Manufacturer) exclusive alliances,” said Paul Davis, the company’s Vice-President, Asia Pacific, Africa & Europe.
“This has enabled us to develop competencies to not only understand the roadmap to training best practice, but more importantly further support and guide our customers’ to achieve the maximum from their training programs in line with their organisational goals.” Key to this was a holistic approach to quantifying operator competencies that linked to operational improvement at customer sites.
“Immersive Technologies has put significant resources into developing capabilities within training curriculum design, simulation integration, data analysis and business improvement methodologies to rapidly deliver value to various mine stakeholders for ongoing continuous improvement,” Davis said. He said an example of how Immersive Technologies was working holistically with big miners to build bridges between operator competencies and operational metrics, could be seen at Xstrata Copper’s Lomas Bayas operation in Chile where a Business Improvement (BI) project facilitated by Immersive Technologies, evaluating the impact of advanced simulator training on site safety and cost control, was recently completed. At the completion of the BI project a 42% reduction in incorrect brake use and 51% reduction in overall errors were recorded in simulation with data recorded from the sites Statex system supporting this improvement trend during in-pit operation.
“The project delivered significant improvements in operational safety and cost minimisation in line with the projects original objectives.” Davis said.
A comprehensive report was compiled by Immersive Technologies training specialists and supplied to Xstrata Lomas Bayas management for further investigation against their in-pit data.
“Ongoing feedback from Lomas Bayas continues to be encouraging, with positive results from ongoing advanced simulator training being carried out on site.”
Contact : Don Forbes
dforbes@immersivetechnologies.com