Industry Example for Asset Tracking in the Mining Industry

North West Mining operates open cut Iron Ore mine sites in remote Australia.

With over 200 pieces of portable plant supporting its mining operations, North West has a 20 strong team of Maintenance Engineers to ensure the plant is working to specification when needed.

North West runs a manual asset register and whenever someone moves a piece of plant there is a process to note that in the register.

The mine site is busy and plant is often moved at very short notice.  It’s not always practical to note the movement at exactly the time it happens, so workers move the plant to where it’s needed planning to update the register later. Shifts at the mine are long and at the end of the shift the workers don’t always have the time or energy to update the register.

Each day the Maintenance Engineers collect their job sheet and check the register to see where the plant to be maintained today is. The problem is often they go to the asset register location and find the asset is not there.  It’s not “lost” but no-one knows where it is right now and it can take hours to locate. 

North West estimates they lose approximately 100 hours of man time each week to misplaced asset searches.

The team at North West need a more efficient solution!

Enter TracerTrak – the remote Asset Tracking system from Pivotel, Australia’s leading Mobile Satellite Service provider.

TracerTrak uses satellite tracking units that are fixed to your remote assets with no installation or wiring requirements, and will provide location reports from your remote assets for up to 7 years.

The location reports are delivered across a commercial satellite communications network from anywhere across Australia, New Zealand and most of the world.

North West's Maintenance Engineers can now login to TracerTrak and pinpoint the exact last location for each remote asset on the list and dispatch the appropriate Maintenance Engineer with no down time searching for assets.

TracerTrak can also monitor for unauthorised usage of assets and operation in unauthorised areas ensuring North West assets are not put at unnecessary risk.

You would be amazed how cost effective this was for North West. At under $500 upfront investment and under $30 per month per device, TracerTrak costs a fraction of the solution North West was using before.

By using TracerTrak, North West has:

 

• Increased productivity of the maintenance team.
• Improved efficiency of the maintenance team.
• Improved availability of equipment to the mining operation.
• Saved significant ongoing costs.

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Ask us how TracerTrak can improve your operational efficiency and costs.