Indian underground mining contractor SMS Ltd and GroundHog have announced a partnership to deploy and use GroundHog’s flagship Short Interval Control and Fleet Management System. The GroundHog system is being used by many of the largest mining companies in the US, Canada, and Australia, and the system has been modified with inputs from SMS to streamline and fit the workflows used by the Indian mines, Mine Developers & Operators (MDOs), and mining contractors. GroundHog has also staffed SMS dispatch (mine control) teams with the long-term goal of establishing a centralised remote control room operations centre to monitor all of SMS’s project sites.
SMS Ltd is a leading underground mining contractor with over 40 years of experience. The statement said: “Their reputation precedes them as pioneers in continuously incorporating mining technology into their processes, and also operates the largest mechanised fleet for underground mines in India. With the government’s recent drive towards privatisation, India has been one of the fastest-growing mining markets in the world. Private mining companies and MDOs view digitisation and automation as a competitive advantage to sustainably increase safety, productivity, and profitability. SMS’s search for a suitable technology partner to establish and execute a digital roadmap ended with finding GroundHog.”
GroundHog is a mine digitisation and automation platform focused on increasing production and safety. With over ten years of experience in digitising and automating mining, GroundHog says its products help with shift scheduling & tracking, fleet management, consumables & explosives inventory management, safety LMS, and incident and hazard management.
GroundHog will start the implementation at two of SMS’s major projects. The team will be implementing it in phases. The first phase will focus on consolidating data sources, designing standard formats for data collection, digitising the paper-based shift exchanges, and setting baseline KPIs. GroundHog will also integrate with SMS biometric and HRMS systems to capture employee entry/exit data and other records. SMS and GroundHog will work together on setting up control room monitoring and data entry. The next few steps will introduce mine manager and supervisor apps and provide tablets to supervisors to digitally capture real-time information directly from the operator and further optimise the KPIs. The third phase includes digital data capture from the maintenance team to cater to any down equipment and provide real-time feedback proactively.
“Our first goal is to get the shift allocation time to 10 minutes or under through automatic resource allocation. In the process, it also streamlines data collection formats and collects real-time data. We believe this will eventually help the production team increase meterage advances, tonnes mined, and equipment availability and utilisation while reducing the cost per tonne-kilometer-hours,” says Amitava Dutta, Director of Product Operations, who is leading the rollout at the SMS project sites.
With GroundHog, SMS can capture trends and quickly identify improvement areas. Real-time capture of delays, downtimes, cycle times, and idle times helps analyse issues and take appropriate actions to resolve them. All these activities help increase production significantly. “We have seen up to 35-40% increase in productivity over nine months amongst our customers. Understanding that technology alone is not enough. The right set of processes and people, along with technology, makes the execution of digitisation projects successful. Our experiences with our customers have helped us design an execution roadmap that helps companies take it step by step and execute and assess before moving to the next step,” says Satish Penmetsa, CEO of GroundHog.
A tablet to collect information in the field, a mobile App to view integrated reports and dashboards, and a desktop app for the control room or dispatch center are all needed to use GroundHog systems. With the industry looking for ways to optimise the process and lower costs, GroundHog helps make digital transformations easy. The future of mining lies in digital, and SMS and GroundHog pave the way for it in the Indian market.
SMS Ltd is part of the SMS Group. The mining division was started in 1989 and has six current projects throughout India. The projects include copper to coal. SMS Ltd offers mine planning design and development, including the construction of inclines and vertical shafts, coal mining by underground methods with blast-less technology using continuous miners and longwall equipment, and mechanised UG hard rock mining for producing metalliferous minerals. SMS has been expanding its presence across the country and abroad and is present across more than ten states in India, having branch offices and various site offices together with an employee base of over 5,000.
