Case Study
Data Driven Safety And Incident Investigation
The engine of a fully laden Cat 793 stalled while travelling up an incline, remained stationary for 2.5 minutes and then rolled backwards reaching a maximum speed of 17.5 kph before hitting a windrow and coming to a stop. Thankfully no one was injured during this incident. Existing OEM/site diagnostic tools did not register any fault codes during the time that the incident occurred, nor did the machine produce any alerts. This created some confusion as to the root cause of the issue making it difficult to put measures in place to avoid similar incidents in future. Given the severity of incident the mine’s inspector had closed the operation down until they were able to demonstrate that the rest of the fleet were not prone to the same concerns.
MaxMine application
Using our unique algorithms MaxMine engineers were able to produce a black-box style incident investigation report within 24 hours of us being notified of the incident. We successfully identified the root cause for the failure – a loose wire on the ECU causing intermittent fuel loss lasting a tenth of a second.
Results
- Maintenance crews were provided with pin-point accuracy on what the fault was and why it was occurring
- Management and site crews were able to put measures in place to avoid similar incidents in the future
- The same algorithm was used to confirm the fault did not exist on other equipment
