Bigger Is No Longer Better. Today Pronto and Whittle Consulting are proud to release our landmark study: “Autonomous Swarm Haulage: The Economics of Autonomous Haulage with Small Trucks.” In conjunction with Whittle Consulting, we set out to comprehensively evaluate how Autonomous Haulage Systems impact the economics of truck size selection. The result? When autonomous, small trucks (40-ton) delivered a life-of-mine NPV 30% greater than larger (100-ton) manned trucks on our hypothetical ore body. Autonomy turns the age-old trend towards larger machinery upside down, enabling smaller, more efficient machines to be more economic. Read the report here: https://bit.ly/3KlTdgX #autonomoustechnology #miningtechnology #AV #AutonomousVehicles #Mining #AHS
Pretty interesting, but the lingering question would be that since the small trucks become more attractive only if they are autonomous, does this attractiveness consider potential negative impact on ESG side of things? Off the bat, lots of jobs would be knocked off for use of autonomous trucks, how does that impact overall stakeholder value? Referring to all stakeholders not just shareholders, how would the poor communities living around the project areas benefit from the extra NPV, would they be sidelined from this economic benefit?
This study maybe good for logistic company - not really mining . Did you consider thing like procurement of spares , inventory , Life Cycle Asset Management cost for multiple fold fleet size? What about the size of ancillary fleet to support this small fleet - And your dump ? What will be the size of your maintenance shop ? How many bay would you need ? Thing don't add up
Will include this in lean value chain methodology, however quantity vs efficiency vs safety vs high traffic vs lead time kpi plays the key factor here.
Autonomous swarm haulage proves that small trucks outperform larger ones with a 30% greater NPV. The era of bigger-is-better shifts with automation.
Interesting article, thanks for publishing.
Great article. Not only more efficient but also safer! Well done
Interesting read- thanks for sharing!
Technical Director - Mining at XCMG Australia
1yThis is a great report with lots of detail. However, the capital cost of $200K for 40t truck looks to be ambitious. Also I don't seem to see how the workshop capital cost is worked into the study. While there will be some savings with smaller trucks, there will still be more bays needed with 67 trucks vs circa 30 trucks, so capex will be more. The availability of the 40 t trucks will likely drop off more quickly as they approach the end of life of 3 years.