KEY POINTS
- Mines don’t have difficulties using PDS because they’re worried about technology.
- You need to plan for traffic and undertake risk assessments in order to be effective.
- People keep using the product because they learn how to use it and deal with change.
Since 2022, rules have stipulated that technology must stop cars from smashing into each other, but the mining industry in South Africa is still having problems completely adopting Level 9 vehicle intervention systems.
Many proximity detection systems (PDS) can automatically slow down or stop trackless mining machines (TMMs) so they don’t hit anything. Booyco Electronics CEO Anton Lourens argues that the technology isn’t the major difficulty; it’s how ready mines are to utilize it every day.
Risk evaluations make PDS safer to use
Lourens thinks that the first step to Level 9 compliance is to undertake a lot of risk assessments and make sure they match with the mine’s plan for managing traffic. Before you can use PDS, you need to make cars and people interact better, look at busy traffic areas, and adjust the way traffic flows. He said that if the alignment is improper, it could induce “PDS fatigue,” which is when operators stop paying attention to alarms because they get too many of them.
People from different departments really do need to work together
The rollout of PDS isn’t just for groups of engineers. Lourens also thinks that the finance, production, and human resources departments need to work together. The finance team needs to figure out how much safety will cost, the HR team needs to make sure that operators get the training they need, and the production team needs to think about how operations will change. When executives from all departments don’t guarantee to be ready for business, it hurts.
For long-term success, change management is very important
Lourens adds that switching to PDS isn’t only a technical problem; it also means changing how people think. Many systems can run on their own utilizing radio frequencies, so miners have to spend money on communication, training, and changing people’s behavior. He says, “Things won’t get better until people change how they act with the new system.”
Lourens adds that the only way to gain all the safety benefits of the Level 9 vehicle intervention is to apply a systematic, all-encompassing strategy from the start to ongoing best-practice reinforcement.
