Fleet management systems have been adopted by many open pit mines throughout the world and the resulting improvement in truck cycle times has been one of the most significant contributors to mine efficiency. Ongoing enhancements to fleet management systems such as interfaces for vital signs monitoring have given incremental efficiency gains. Each incremental improvement is another step towards a grand vision of a totally automated mine. A relatively new fleet management system is being integrated with two other technologies to provide a highly reliable platform for a networked information system which monitors mine machinery and production. The paper reviews the integration project, the features of the new mine site information network platform and the contribution to productivity and safety._x000D_
The new fleet management system has a predictive truck dispatch algorithm. It also has a distributed database that replicates rapidly so that each machine in the fleet has an identical database, thereby making each machine aware of other machines' locations on the site._x000D_
High precision systems for navigating and monitoring machinery such as drills, dozers, draglines and shovels provide individual machine operators with cockpit style real-time information to increase their operational efficiency._x000D_
The integration of the new fleet management systems capabilities with the high precision systems that provide production information, machine vital signs data and operator information means that the mine operations and maintenance managers have real-time access to the whole mine site's production data._x000D_
Such a mine monitoring and reporting system is dependent on reliable wireless communications and reliable positions. Positions in fleet management and high precision systems for open pit mines are usually provided by global positioning system (GPS). Other global navigation satellite systems (GNSS) such as Glonass, and in the future Galileo, will provide additional satellite cover; however, some parts of open pit mines do not have enough sky visibility for reliable GNSS positioning and so a new centimetre level wireless positioning system called Locata is being integrated with the fleet and high precision systems to augment and backup the GNSS positions._x000D_
The final integrated system will provide the highest levels of reliable position-based information to all stakeholders in a mine's operation, ensuring gains in productivity and safety._x000D_
FORMAL CITATION:Nix, M, 2008. Location aware mine machinery for productivity and safety improvements, in Proceedings First International Future Mining Conference and Exhibition 2008, pp 175-178 (The Australasian Institute of Mining and Metallurgy: Melbourne).