Fitzroy Australia Resources is introducing scheduling software to help improve the productivity and safety of its Carborough Downs coal mine in the Bowen Basin, Queensland.
Software company Commit Works is implementing the Fewzion planning and scheduling software to be used by frontline planners, schedulers and coordinators.
Carborough Downs supervisors, deputies and the crew will use large touchscreens and an integrated short interval control app on intrinsically safe smartphones and tablets to communicate the progress of their work underground.
“This is a necessary and exciting step in our journey. … One of the most important fundamentals that underpins our business is the daily, weekly and monthly planning process,” Fitzroy chief operating officer Richard Livingstone-Blevins said.
“We have a belief that our systems should support our personnel, not vice versa, and that by implementing a solution that makes it easier for our employees to plan, the net result will be higher quality plans transferring into greater execution rates.”
The Commit Works team has nearly completed its rapid 12-week rollout of the system at Carborough Downs.
Fitzroy’s “legacy” spreadsheet system will be replaced by Fewzion, which will be integrated with its enterprise resource planning systems. The company plans to increase its implementation of Fewzion at future operations.
Commit Works developed Fewzion in collaboration with Anglo American to replace whiteboards and spreadsheets traditionally used to prepare shift plans on site.
“The ultimate goal is to have a system that supports highly efficient and effective planning, making the planning process easier and less time-consuming for our employees,” Livingstone-Blevins concluded.