BHP Billiton Iron Ore will use the Loc8 platform to manage the full robotic automation of its rail car maintenance tasks at its Mooka and Nelson Point ore car repair shops in WA’s Pilbara region.
Loc8 on Thursday announced its cloud platform has been selected for use by BHP following “a stringent review process.”
Touted as a solution which combines asset management, planned and reactive maintenance, and field service control, Loc8 delivers information both online and to mobile device devices.
The Loc8 contract underpins BHP’s $1 billion capital productivity project that involves full automation of previously manual processes and procedures at its rail operations.
For BHP, Loc8 will manage automation, data dissemination and control of over 200 process rules, managing 67 robots that operate the Rolling Stock Reliability System which BHP employs at its Mooka and Nelson Point ore car repair shops.
Mooka, in particular, is key to BHP’s overall expansion strategy, as the miner’s ore car fleet has been significantly expanded to cater for increased throughput.
“Every company, no matter how large or small in the service supply chain, strives to run as efficiently as possible,” Loc8 chief technology officer Owen Batt said.
“BHP Billiton’s newly created iron ore car maintenance facility in Mooka, WA, has taken the opportunity to set a high standard in efficiency from the ground up in using Loc8 effectively as its ‘digital oil’ to run its maintenance operations.
“We are proud to work with the team to deliver this innovative project,” Batt added.
BHP recently expanded its iron ore capacity in the Pilbara, and added the ore car repair shop at Mooka siding along the existing Port Hedland to Newman mainline.
BHP identified the need for additional rolling stock maintenance capabilities as the business exceeds a capacity of 200 million tonnes per annum.
Mooka will initially be able to service 18 ore cars per 10 hour shift totalling 36 cars a day. Further stages of the development will see the capacity increase to 58 cars per day, Loc8 said.