Surface Mining Simulators

AFRICAN MINING BRIEF – JANUARY 2013

ThoroughTec has been designing and manufacturing simulators for over 20 years and is the leading simulator system supplier to the South African Military.

It is also the largest global supplier of both surface and underground simulators in the mining and construction industries, with well over 500 simulator units deployed worldwide.

ThoroughTec Simulation Offers a Complete Range of Open Cast Excavation and Loading Simulator Equipment. Their high fidelity CYBERMINE simulators provide mining companies with a quick, safe and cost-effective way to significantly improve the skills of both new and veteran operators. This is done by providing operators with a safe, controlled environment in which to learn and practise equipment controls, instruments and correct operating procedures.

“Developing a virtual version of a customer’s actual mine site so that its operators train in the actual environment.”

They offer the broadest range of mining equipment simulators in the industry, including all major surface vehicle classes used in open cast mining fleets, and most OEMs. In terms of vehicle classes, ThoroughTec manufactures simulators for loaders, dozers, haul trucks, graders, surface drill rigs and surface articulated dump trucks, while Komatsu, Caterpillar, Atlas Copco, Sandvik, P&H, Liebherr and Bucyrus are some of the OEMs covered. They also offer the option of a customised mine site, developing a virtual version of a customer’s actual mine site so that its operators train in the actual environment, with the actual operating procedures, that they will operate in.

ThoroughTec is MIL-STD compliant and ISO 9001 accredited, which means that CYBERMINE simulators are engineered to military standards for greater accuracy, increased reliability and lower maintenance costs. The result is average availability of 97.8% and two years mean time between unscheduled downtime. Maintenance costs are correspondingly low, making CYBERMINE simulators the best value proposition. We also offer training consultancy services to help mine sites immediately integrate their simulator investment and enhance their training program, and they partner with external industry accredited and reputed experts to ensure best practices are applied.

South Africa remains ThoroughTec’s largest market, due in part to it being their home market, and also to the reputation ThoroughTec has earned through its 15 year relationship with the South African Army. Many of their biggest customers are open cast mines, such as Anglo American’s Sishen iron mine in the Northern Cape in South Africa. “Sishen is one of our biggest customers, and has been using CYBERMINE simulators for over a decade, says Gregory Lew, Executive Vice President Global Business Development. “Sishen recently ordered what ThoroughTec believes to be the largest ever single simulator purchase, comprising six CYBERMINE4 containerised base units and an initial seven surface mining simulator cabs, with another six base units in the pipeline.” The last two years has seen significant international expansion for the company, with regional offices set up in Perth, Australia, Santiago, Chile, and Toronto, Canada.

With this expansion have come sales in all major mining regions of the world. In South America, ThoroughTec has made sales to Anglo American’s Minas Rio mine (Brazil), Goldcorp’s Cerro Negro (Argentina), Industrias Peñoles, the largest mining group in Mexico, and the Argentinian operation of Yamana Gold. Notable sales in Australia include to the Rio Tinto Block Cave Knowledge Centre of Excellence at Northparkes Mine and Curtin University’s Western Australian School of Mines (WASM), while Rio Tinto Argyle, a diamond mine in Western Australia, has extended its training facilities with a Sandvik underground loader simulator and Wesfarmers Curragh colliery in Queensland recently took delivery of a second generation CYBERMINE4 dragline simulator, updated to class-leading levels of behavioral realism. In Indonesia, FMI’s Grasberg operation has also chosen ThoroughTec as its simulation partner. India has emerged as a new market with ThoroughTec’s first sale in the region, to Hindustan Zinc, and ThoroughTec’s presence in North America has solidified with a number of recent sales with Goldcorp’s Red Lake in Canada the latest to sign. “When we look at entering a market we obviously first take a look at the size of the mining industry in that region,” says Lew. “We look at the number of mines, the size of the mine sites.

Once we have established this, we can make a decision on whether to make exploratory visits to the region, which in turn determine whether or not it is a viable market to pursue.” “In Africa, one of the biggest challenges we encounter is the physical remoteness of mine sites,” says Lew. “This presents a significant challenge in getting personnel and equipment to the mine, and even to make initial contact. Communication with these remote mine sites is also difficult, because their telephone and internet services are often unreliable – some guys in Africa carry three mobile phones because they don’t know which mobile phone operator will be working that day!” “The language barrier can also be a problem,” continues Lew, “especially when entering markets such as Russia or parts of Africa where there is very little English spoken.” With regards to challenges affecting the actual simulator training, there are very few. Computer literacy amongst the instructors has been an issue in certain regions, but operating the simulators is very user friendly and after a ‘train the trainer’ course instructors are usually comfortable with the system. To overcome the language barrier, CYBERMINE simulators can be ordered in a number of different languages – we have already developed simulators in Spanish and French. Other than that, simulator training actually overcomes most traditional training challenges such as running costs, damage to vehicles, taking vehicles out of production and the operator’s safety.