Increasing Productivity and Conserving Person-Hours Through Automated Fuel Dispatching at Sierra Gorda

The fueling process at mines takes working equipment away from production, reducing productivity by hundreds of hours each year. KGHM’s Sierra Gorda mine uses an automated dispatching service – Wenco Fuel Dispatch – to handle fueling of its fleet of 58 Komatsu 930E haul trucks. Through automating its fueling, the mine has increased its average fill volumes from 3,400 litres to 3,900 litres per fuel session, with projections to reach 4,200 litres in the near future. At a burn rate of 260 litres per hour, each truck now has the potential to stay in production an average of 1.92 hours longer before fueling. Use of automated dispatching has also allowed Sierra Gorda to reduce wait times at fuel stations by 10%, further shrinking unproductive time. Moreover, automated dispatching has enabled the mine to redirect its full-time fueling dispatcher to other tasks, thereby conserving one full-time crew member. This paper discusses how implementation of Wenco Fuel Dispatch contributed to increased production time and more robust productivity at Sierra Gorda mine.