Endeavour Mining’s West African Mine, Houndé Gold, Seeing Significant Operator Improvements with Simulator Training from Immersive Technologies.
The greenfield Houndé Gold Operation (HGO) by Endeavour Mining in Burkina Faso has recently gone into development and with quick timelines to get equipment to site and operators trained. Endeavour Mining has selected operator training solutions from Immersive Technologies.
“In the short time the site has been operational the simulator training program has already produced significant improvement in operator behaviors resulting in a reduction unscheduled maintenance including tire, shifting and transmission abuse as well as improvements in spotting times and incorrect brake application. Over time we plan to provide training in the simulators for people of the local community not employed by HGO. Our first priority is to train the personnel selected for operational positions. This is quite a lengthy process.”
Operators are trained on specific behaviours that impact machine health, safety and productivity and management is able to identify which operators require additional training.
“In our baseline evaluation we noted a common problem where many operators were using a gear too high for the grade thereby impacting transmission performance. After training was conducted operators later returned to one of the two simulators for a remeasure and we found the training had resulted in an 85% decrease in improper gear selection.
The site reported an:
- 80% reduction in tire abuse errors
- 67.7% reduction in incorrect brake application
- 41.5% reduction in engine damage
- 11 second improvement in spot time
- 6.44 second reduction in average loading reversing time
- 1.57 minute improvement in average circuit time
“These types of improvements are why we selected Immersive Technologies for simulator training. The level of support and focus on results is what we need to make our mine safer and more profitable"
Endeavour is utilizing two simulators from Immersive Technologies with multiple simulator modules and is the first mine using this level of technology in Burkina Faso.
Endeavour owns five operating mines in West Africa. The mines are located in Côte d’Ivoire, Ghana, Mali and Burkina Faso and are expected to produce between 575,000 to 600,000 ounces in 2016.
Endeavour Mining has selected operator training solutions from Immersive Technologies for their new Burkina Faso mining project and is already seeing significant improvement in behaviors leading to unscheduled maintenance including tire, shifting and transmission abuse as well as spotting times and incorrect brake application.
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About Immersive Technologies
Immersive Technologies is the world’s largest, proven and tested supplier of surface and underground Advanced Equipment Simulators to the global mining industry. The company has achieved this unique position by focusing on its mission to increase Customer profitability by optimizing the safety and productivity of their operators. Immersive Technologies’ Advanced Equipment Simulators are helping hundreds of mining companies around the world to increase their equipment operators’ safety and site profitability through effective simulation training.
Immersive Technologies provides its customers with the most effective Advanced Equipment Simulators available. This is made possible through the formal licensing and technical information alliances Immersive has established with the leading Original Equipment Manufacturers (OEM), including: Caterpillar Global Mining, Hitachi, Komatsu and Liebherr. These unique alliances provide Immersive Technologies with access to the OEM’s proprietary and confidential machine technical information that is required to correctly simulate the OEM’s machines and is not available through other public or dealer channels.
With advanced simulator modules deployed in 51 countries, Immersive Technologies is dedicated to provide outstanding service. To deliver on this commitment the company has customer sales and support offices located close to its customers in Perth and Brisbane Australia, Salt Lake City USA, Fort McMurray, Ottawa & Vancouver Canada, Monterrey Mexico, Lima Peru, Santiago Chile, Belo Horizonte Brazil, Bochum Germany, Johannesburg South Africa, Jakarta Indonesia, Kolkata India and Moscow Russia.
Immersive has the global mining experience, innovative technology, product range, OEM relationships, proven support commitment and industry vision to partner with you to ensure your simulator training solution delivers the significant results you expect.