Road Transport

Overview

SmartCap’s installation at this open-cut copper mining operation in East Asia followed multiple successful deployments in Australian coal  operations across the business’s global portfolio. Fatigue had been identified as a potential hazard, with the mine’s haulage fleet recognised as the highest-risk asset class. Following the initial deployment to 38 mining trucks, SmartCap has since been additionally deployed to:

• the bus fleet responsible for transporting personnel to and from the local airport and around the mining lease
• the over-the-road truck fleets responsible for moving copper concentrate from the site to its final destination.

Original Install Date: SmartCap was deployed in September 2015, with full rollout to the mining operation completed in January 2016.

Number of Trucks and Drivers: The number of vehicles and drivers that benefited from each stage of the deployment are as follows:

• Open-cut operation: 45 mining vehicles and 386 operators
• Bus fleet: 15 buses, 2 light vehicles and 45 drivers
• Concentrate truck fleets: 173 trucks and 250 drivers

Deployment Statistics: Over the past year, SmartCap’s usage on this operation has totalled 316,000 hours and 11,430,000km of driving. Broken down over the three different areas of the deployment, this equates to:

• Open-cut operation: 240,000 hours (at 30km/h) and 7.2 million km
• Bus fleet: 11,000 hours (at 30km/h)and 330,000km
• Logistics: 65,000 hours (at 60km/h) and 3.9 million km

Outcomes

Statistics following this deployment show:

• There have been zero fatigue incidents for SmartCap operators across 3.5 years and 1.1 million hours of operation.
• There has been a 68% reduction in the fatigue alarm rate.
• Early warning alerts have resulted in 97.7% effective operator self-management actions.
• The SmartCap data has generated the business insight that there is an 80% increase in the fatigue risk alarm rate during the sub-zero winters compared to summer periods.

Overview

A large over-the-road trucking company headquartered in the United States piloted SmartCap as part of their efforts to reduce loss events associated with fatigue.

The pilot was used to:

• assess the scalability of processes.
• gauge driver feedback.
• The pilot was carried out at two terminals in the dedicated refrigerated division, which was selected based on the diversity of typical rostered working hours at each terminal; one terminal operated predominantly at night time, while the other incorporated 24/7 operations.

Original Install Date: The SmartCap pilot began in July 2018 and took three months.
Number of Trucks and Drivers: 87 vehicles and 87 drivers were involved.
Hours or Miles in Pilot: The duration of the pilot was 8,730 hours and approximately 520,000 miles (835,000 km).

Outcomes

Highlights from the completed pilot include:

• There were zero fatigue incidents for SmartCap drivers.
• Early warning actions were 93.1% effective.
• There was a 62.4% reduction in fatigue alarms over the three-month pilot.
• No service failures were associated with “stop and stretch” interventions.
• Drivers, driver leaders and schedulers engaged positively with the pilot.

“I recommend that all drivers should be required to wear this to better understand their fatigue.” – Driver

“The system performed exactly how you said it would and we have no doubt that the technology works.” – Senior Safety Manager

“I can see how this system could really help prevent accidents. Fatigue is a constant struggle for everyone and anything that can help manage that would be great.” – Driver Leader

Overview

Beeshoek deployed SmartCap in 2014 to assist in gauging the fatigue risk on-site and empowering the workforce to proactively self-manage. Leading up to the deployment, the site had suffered from a number of incidents involving operators returning to work after extended periods of leave.

Outcomes

Beeshoek have seen a significant reduction in fatigue incidents on-site. Workforce engagement has greatly improved as a result of the inclusive change management process.  

Challenges

• Limited literacy amongst the workforce has required a heavy emphasis on training via demonstration.
• High staff turnover makes long-term improvements difficult to guage.