CASCADIA SCIENTIFIC- August 19th, 2019
Below is a detailed explanation of Cascadia Scientific's SmartRView platform, its differentiation in the market, and how our clients are leveraging the SmartRView platform to capture costs savings, increase efficiencies, and reduce GHG’s associated with their mobile assets.
The fundamental objective of the SmartRView platform is to uncover and pursue data-driven business improvement opportunities based on directly measured fuel consumption, and operational analytics. SmartRView’ s main differentiator is our ability to deliver high accuracy on-equipment fuel consumption measurement. The SmartRView platform includes mining specific fuel flow meters, installed on the feed and return fuel lines of surface mobile equipment. The result is fuel consumption measurement accuracy to >99%. (See image attached).
We measure fuel directly as ECM calculated fuel consumption has a high degree of error (as high as 10% in either direction). Moreover this error is not constant across a fleet of vehicles, making it very challenging to base sound decision making on ECM fuel consumption data.
Fuel pump, or tank fill measurements do not provide the measurement frequency needed, furthermore each tank fill is not equal with respects to the amount of work and intensity of work performed between each refueling event. Fuel pump or tank fill measurements make it difficult, if not impossible, to analyze and understand the many factors that impact fuel consumption to the level of an individual haul cycle. All of the business improvement opportunities made available by the SmartRView platform cannot be achieved without direct, on equipment fuel consumption measurement.
There is certainly great value in measuring fuel consumption directly on surface mobile equipment. That said, outhe SmartRView platform goes well beyond simply measuring fuel to a high degree of accuracy. In addition to fuel consumption data, SmartRView integrates with on board vehicle networks, and we bring in non native sensing such as: Pressure based altimeter to measure vertical travel, and 9-axis motion sensing to detect ramp grades, and acceleration/ deceleration events.
As an example, in a haul truck application, Data is captured upon every load and dump event and additionally on time-based intervals to characterize each individual haul cycle. Each haul cycle is an observation and is characterised by in terms of: measured fuel consumption, duration, distance, tonnage, vertical travel, average ramp grade, Loaded vertical travel, unloaded vertical travel, operator, equipment, month of the year etc. The resulting analysis allows our customer to uncover meaningful business improvement initiatives that would otherwise not be attainable.
While all hardware is included and warrantied in perpetuity, we are first and foremost a data company that helps our clients improve their business through fuel measurement informed analytics. The business improvement opportunities, or “Use cases” as we call them, generally fall into 4 main categories- operations, maintenance, procurement, and mine planning.
All the data generated from the equipment is collected, analyzed, and returned to our clients via the SmartRView web portal. All data is owned by our clients, and raw data is always made available for download in the web portal.
Here is the general format we follow with our clients.
- Subscribers identify opportunities for improvement
- Cascadia's Data Scientist collaborate with users to establish baselines and evaluate strategies
- The Cascadia Web Portal is used to track and model performance
- Subscribers implement fully informed changes to drive business improvement
Following this format, here are a few case studies:
- Case Study # 1: Coal Mine
Operator Evaluation and coaching: Efficiency Gains 2.7%.
SmartRView can characterize and rank the performance of your operators in terms of efficiency and productivity. Armed with this information, supervisors can incentivise good behavior and focus remedial training and corrective measures on low-end performers. With our client operating a fleet of CAT 793C/D haul trucks in Latin America, SmartRView observed and analyzed a group of 30 operators and found that operator performance had a 7% impact on haul truck fuel efficiency, and across the observed operators, there was an average total opportunity for improvement of 2.7%. Using the SmartRView data, we then worked with the client to develop strategies to optimize their operator’s performance, and operator training programs to capture the uncovered cost savings.
- Case Study # 2: Oil Sands Operation
Maintain to efficiency/ Maintain to fuel burn: 1.6% increase in fleet efficiency + reduced consumable costs and/or improved equipment availability.
In the oil sands, SmartRView is currently used to strengthen preventative maintenance strategies through the adoption of fuel measurement analytics on haul trucks and dozers. SmartRView allows for targeted maintenance on equipment that fall out of an expected efficiency window thereby raising average fleet efficiency. Also, by tracking total fuel burn since last service, a far better proxy for equipment wear and lubricant deterioration, this customer implemented an improved preventive maintenance strategy that lowered costs while improving availability. Through implementing the new strategies of: Maintain to Equipment Efficiency, and Maintain to fuel burn, this oil sands client saw a 1.6% increase in fleet wide efficiency plus additional cost savings through the reduction in consumable costs, and improved equipment availability.
If you have any further questions, or are interested in how SmartRView can generate value in your operations, please feel free to reach me at:
Sedwards@cascadiascientific.com
Thanks,
Stephen
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