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Hierarchy of controls

Kal Tire understands that more effective maintenance means less chance of worker injury.

There is an ongoing commitment to improve safety across the mining industry, especially when it comes to protecting workers maintaining heavy equipment.

Personal protective equipment (PPE) gives the worker a degree of safety, while administrative controls such as legislative requirements are implemented by companies in order to change the way people work. But the potential for injury remains.

The most effective way to improve safety in the workplace is to physically remove the hazard or, alternatively, undertake regular and effective maintenance.

Kal Tire Australia managing director Miles Rigney said his company uses a guideline called the “hierarchy of controls” as a means to identify the best way to keep its team members and customers safe.

“Controlling exposures to occupational hazards is a fundamental method of protecting workers,” Rigney said.

“Traditionally, hierarchy of controls has been used as a means of determining how to implement feasible and effective solutions to control hazards and their associated risks in the workplace.”

Eliminating the hazard and risk is the highest level of control in the hierarchy, followed by reducing the risk through substitution, isolation and engineering controls, before finally reducing the risk through the use of PPE, which represents the lowest level of control.

According to Rigney, Kal Tire uses the hierarchy of controls to ensure a continuous improvement in safety for its team members, especially when removing wheel assemblies from heavy mobile equipment, either during planned or unplanned maintenance.

Clear safe work procedures are followed throughout this high-risk maintenance process.

For example, installing and removing a tyre and wheel assembly begins with placing the tyre handler into the correct position, followed by the operator shutting down the handler and exiting the machine. Only then can the technician enter the risk zone between the tyre handler and the actual tyre and wheel assembly to complete the removal.

Inspections are also an important and common task that can help improve safety on a mine site.

Current industry methods for detecting off-the-road (OTR) tyre damage involve routine manual inspection. This remains inherently hazardous, often revolving around a weekly schedule, and can involve machine downtime that results in production losses.

Manual inspection has significant limitations, including the potential for tyre damage to be missed. This has led mine operators to embrace autonomous inspection and monitoring technologies.

To help reduce the risk to technicians during manual inspections and improve productivity, Kal Tire joined forces with technology specialists Pitcrew.ai in 2021 to create a new automated solution for the detection of hot tyres, tyre separations and other tyre and mechanical damage on mine site machinery.

This smart technology has been deployed at Antofagasta Minerals’ Centinela mine operation in Chile, where an average of 200 hundred tyres are checked per week by a thermal imaging camera that, installed in one of the pit circuits, monitors the condition of these vital components.

As autonomous tyre inspection stations monitor front and rear tyres of passing mining trucks, the artificial intelligence (AI) software scans the thermal imagery for anomalies or defects such as hot spots, and belt edge and tread separations.

The findings are then reported to Kal Tire’s proprietary TOMS (Tire and Operations Management System) before it automates inspection work orders, scheduling any necessary tyre change work based on the severity of the damage.

TOMS helps customers achieve efficiency targets for fleet use, tyre life and safety.

This information provides fleet planning teams with a 360° view of tyre maintenance activity with near-real-time 24–7 reporting and improves the mean time between service (MTBS) with automated, priority-based orders.

effective maintenance
Regular maintenance is one of the most effective ways to improve safety in the workplace.

Thermographic inspection at the mine has produced strong results, not only because working remotely means it eliminates risk when people are directly monitoring the tyre, but also because it has managed to reduce downtime and had a positive impact on production.

“Tyres have a lot of contained pneumatic energy, and with this we are removing the operator from that source of damage and danger, which is already a giant opportunity,” Centinela mine services superintendent Rodrigo Jorquera said.

“In addition, with this thermal imaging technology we have the capacity to monitor over 200 tyres per week. If we did not have it, each tyre would need a stoppage of more than 30 minutes for inspection, but now that it is monitored remotely, the truck does not stop and we save significant time.”

The thermographic camera relies on AI to categorise the damage that the tyre may have at different levels, depending on the temperature, automating and optimising work orders.

“Of the 200 weekly pieces of equipment that are inspected, an average of 10 per cent present different degrees of damage, according to what is monitored with this camera,” Centinela business administrator José López said.

“But of that 10 per cent, only five per cent show significant damage and must go to the checkpoint, which is the place where we physically inspect this equipment.

“With this we eliminate the stoppage time, therefore this monitoring station and this technology have allowed us to improve operational continuity and, in addition, our availability KPIs.”

Kal Tire’s Mining Tire Group senior vice president Dan Allan believes this technology allow miners to work smarter.

“Tire pressure monitoring systems (TPMS) can give a strong picture of what’s happening inside the tyre, but so much of what can indicate the potential for tyre failure happens outside the tyre,” Allan said.

Pitcrew.ai’s artificial intelligence, and their vision for the technology, supports our goal of solving customer challenges in practical, impactful ways.”

Kal Tire’s ongoing use of Pitcrew.ai’s OTR tyre-detection system leads directly to carbon emission savings, which helps to meet environmental, social and governance (ESG) goals.

“Kal Tire is operating in a way that puts ESG at the forefront, which is very much a priority for our customers in Australia,” Allan said.

“So we’re proud to offer solutions that enhance safety, sustainability and productivity.”

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