International Journal of Mining Science and Technology xxx (xxxx) xxx

Contents lists available at ScienceDirect

International Journal of Mining Science and Technology

journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/ijmst

Performance evaluation of near real-time condition monitoring

in haul trucks
Hemanth Reddy Alla ⇑, Robert Hall, Derek B. Apel
University of Alberta, Edmonton T6G 2H5, Canada

a r t i c l e i n f o a b s t r a c t

Article history: Strategic maintenance plays a key role in ensuring high availability and utilization of the haul trucks, and
Received 17 June 2019 as equipment began to grow more complex towards the end of the 20th century, there was a need for a
Received in revised form 4 March 2020 proactive maintenance strategy, which led to the development of condition-based maintenance. Real-
Accepted 29 May 2020
time condition monitoring (RTCM) is the ability to perform condition monitoring in real-time and has
Available online xxxx
the ability to alert maintenance and operations of abnormal conditions. These alarms can be used as
an indication leading to a problem, and if a suitable corrective action is initiated in time, it could result
Keywords:
in significant savings of equipment downtime and repair costs. This study aims to compare some main-
Haul trucks
Real-time condition monitoring
tenance performance indicators prior to and after implementation of RTCM strategy at a mine site using
Performance indicators some tests of statistical significance. The study also indicated the presence of seasonality in the data, and
thus the data was deseasonalized and detrended prior to being subjected to the statistical tests. Finally,
the results indicated that RTCM strategy has proven to be successful in improving the availability for
some of the failure categories chosen in this study.
Ó 2020 Published by Elsevier B.V. on behalf of China University of Mining & Technology. This is an open
access article under the CC BY-NC-ND license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/).

1. Introduction performance of maintenance productivity to be measured with

In order to meet the production targets and ever-increasing
demand, mining companies are heavily dependent on sophisti-
cated equipment, not only for extracting and transporting ore
and waste product, but also to constantly maintain the infrastruc-
ture needed to keep the mines operating. This equipment has to be
maintained in top health condition to realize their full potential
and reduce operating costs. Equipment maintenance consists of a
significant part of the total mine operating costs, ranging from
20% to 35% of the total operating costs [1]. Haul trucks play a sig-
nificant role in open-pit mines across the world. Haul trucks
account for about 40% of the total operating costs and hence it is
essential to maximize their availability and utilization in order to
get the most out of existing resources [2]. Companies are aiming
at improving haul truck efficiency as a key part of their efforts to
reduce costs and improve the competitiveness of their operations.
With the total cost to operate each truck ranging in the hundreds of
dollars per hour, it is essential that the trucks are always in produc-
tion when required and are in top health condition. The multidis-
ciplinary nature of mining maintenance activities requires the
⇑ Corresponding author at: #6-235, 9211 116 St, NW, Edmonton, Alberta T6G
2H5, Canada.
E-mail address: hemanthr@ualberta.ca (H.R. Alla).
an integrated approach. Companies started treating maintenance
as an integral part of their business due to the added value that
maintenance creates to their business process [3]. Fig. 1 illustrates
the three basic maintenance strategies that are widely in practice
[4]. The correct mix of these three can be determined based on
evaluating the risk, cost and impact on environment and health
and safety.
In the 1940s, maintenance activities were treated as ‘‘a neces-
sary evil”, where repairs and replacements were corrective and
addressed only when equipment or a component of the equipment
failed, also known as a run-to-failure maintenance strategy. By the
1960s, equipment maintenance activities started to be regarded as
a technical matter and involved optimizing maintenance solutions
and activities. As equipment began to grow more complex towards
the late 1970 s, preventive maintenance was not proven very effec-
tive on the more complex equipment due to a lack of knowledge
and poor understanding of the failure characteristics of the newer
complex equipment. The late 1980s and early 1990s witnessed the
emergence of a new maintenance trend where maintenance
requirements were integrated into the early stages of equipment
design and development. This led to the maintenance strategies
being proactive rather than reactive, with maintenance activities
being recognized as profit contributors and better appreciated
within the organization [5].

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ijmst.2020.05.024
2095-2686/Ó 2020 Published by Elsevier B.V. on behalf of China University of Mining & Technology.
This is an open access article under the CC BY-NC-ND license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/).

Please cite this article as: H. R. Alla, R. Hall and D. B. Apel, Performance evaluation of near real-time condition monitoring in haul trucks, International
Journal of Mining Science and Technology, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ijmst.2020.05.024
2 H.R. Alla et al. / International Journal of Mining Science and Technology xxx (xxxx) xxx

evolution has been used to understand and forecast commodity

prices [15]. A similar technique was used in this paper to study
the temporal relationships of downtime and number of downs, in
order to detrend and deseasonalize the data.

3. Study on trend and seasonality

The first step in evaluating the performance of a RTCM system is

Fig. 1. Basic maintenance strategies. to identify the failures for which times to repair and number of
downs can be compared prior to and after the implementation of
the RTCM system. In order to achieve this, the top twelve contrib-
utors to total down hours are plotted in descending order, along
2. Predictive or condition-based maintenance with the number of down events for each category (see Figs. 2
and 3). In Figs. 2 and 3, the blue bars represent the categorical
Predictive maintenance, often referred to as condition-based down hours as a percentage of total down hours and are sorted
maintenance (CBM), collects and assesses equipment condition in in descending order. The orange lines indicate the categorical num-
real-time for recommending maintenance decisions and schedul- ber of down events, measured as a percentage of the total down
ing maintenance activities based on the current condition of the events. Figs. 2 and 3 are generated for two years, 2017 and 2018
equipment. This optimizes planned maintenance schedules and respectively, where 2017 represents pre-RTCM data, and 2018 rep-
prevents/minimizes premature component and equipment failures resents the post-RTCM data.
[6]. Condition-based monitoring utilizes modern instrumentation As seen in Figs. 2 and 3, the most frequent contributors to
to monitor the asset’s health condition and to indicate the need downtime hours that will be studied are engine, brakes and dump
for a future maintenance event. Depending on the nature and body. These components were chosen because they are monitored
severity of the fault, equipment can be serviced immediately or by the current RTCM strategy implemented at the mine site. A brief
scheduled for repair on a later date. Condition monitoring tech- summary of RTCM models to address each of the above down cat-
niques can be broadly classified as periodic or continuous. While egories is summarized as follows:
periodic monitoring systems acquire data at selected time inter-
vals, continuous monitoring systems collect equipment data con- (1) Engine: Critical engine parameters e.g. engine oil tempera-
tinuously. Selection of an appropriate condition monitoring ture, pressure, engine speed, exhaust gas temperatures are
technique is a function of hardware and installation costs, time, constantly monitored and maintenance personnel are
availability of infrastructure and resources. Continuous monitoring alerted and prompted to take timely action when any or
helps establish trends in real-time and their analysis helps predict all of the parameters exceeded thresholds set by the user.
problems before they lead to catastrophic failures. Continuous con- (2) Brakes: Brake temperature, brake oil temperature and brake
dition monitoring also enables comparison of data with pre- oil pressure are continuously monitored, along with the mis-
established criteria in real-time for providing automated warnings use of service brake applications to necessitate timely
about equipment condition. Real-time condition monitoring preventive measures.
(RTCM) is the ability to perform condition monitoring in real-
time and is a process that allows administrators or users to access,
review and use data in near real-time from a secure database [7].
RTCM introduces the ability to alert maintenance and operations
of abnormal conditions: alarms are triggered when monitored
parameters exceed manufacturer or user defined thresholds, or
when equipment is operating in an undesired manner. Sites can
program alarms to detect simple instantaneous threshold viola-
tions or more complex deviations from the normal trend. These
alarms can be used as an indication of a potential problem, and if
a suitable corrective action is initiated in time, it could result in sig-
nificant savings of equipment downtime and repair costs. If imple-
mented properly, and subject to all other conditions remaining
stationery, RTCM has the potential to bring significant improve-
Fig. 2. Failure log analysis for 2017.
ments to mean time to repair, which in turn results in productivity
improvements. The objective of this paper is to compare the total
time to repair and the number of downs for a fleet of haul trucks,
prior to and after implementing a RTCM system in the mine. Stud-
ies have been conducted to demonstrate the benefits of using con-
dition monitoring in mining haul trucks [8,9]. Thompson et al. and
Heyns et al. outlined the development and feasibility of a real-time
mine road maintenance management system [10,11]. Real-time
monitoring has also been implemented in various underground
mines for assessing slope stability with successful results [12,13].
Statistical approaches such as univariate exponential regression
and multivariate linear regression were used to determine over-
haul and maintenance cost of loading equipment, which can then
be used to make strategic and profitable decisions in surface mines
[14]. Chaos theory and machine learning techniques have been
used to represent the temporal relationships of variables and their Fig. 3. Failure log analysis for 2018.

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 H.R. Alla et al. / International Journal of Mining Science and Technology xxx (xxxx) xxx
(3) Dump body: Travelling with the dump body raised beyond
certain speeds results in excessive stress on the truck frame.
Continuous monitoring of dump body events can help in
reduction or elimination of those events by providing suit-
able training when necessary. Prior to using the data for
analysis, it is important to graph the sequence plots of the
time series, with data series values on the vertical axis and
time on the horizontal axis. The sequence plots give a visual
impression and indicate the presence of certain behavioral
components present within the time series [16]. Figs. 4
and 5 show the sequence plots of repair costs and work
order counts at the site from January 2012 to December
2018, respectively. The values are intentionally concealed
to maintain confidentiality and to not reveal the identity of
the mine.
A time series plot is assumed to be a combination of a pattern
that comprises of the trend and seasonality, and some random
error. It is important to separate the pattern from the error by
understanding the patterns trend, and its seasonality prior to use
[16]. Figs. 6 and 7 present box plot views of the yearly (for evalu-
ating the trend) and monthly (for evaluating the seasonality) dis-
tribution of maintenance costs and work order counts,
respectively. An increase in work order counts and maintenance
costs could be a result of aging equipment. Autocorrelation plots
can help find repetitive patterns in time-series data and have been
applied to the historic maintenance costs and work order counts to
assess the presence of any seasonal patterns.
Fig. 4. Monthly down hours from 2012 to 2018.
Fig. 5. Monthly work orders from 2012 to 2018.
Fig. 6. Yearly and monthly box plot views of down hours.
Please cite this article as: H. R. Alla, R. Hall and D. B. Apel, Performance evaluation of near real-time condition monitoring in haul trucks, International
Journal of Mining Science and Technology, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ijmst.2020.05.024
3
The autocorrelation plots presented in Fig. 8 did not show the
existence of any strong patterns, so further tests were performed
to evaluate the presence of any seasonal patterns in the data.
Decomposing complex time series into trend, seasonality, and
residual components (error) is an important task to facilitate time
series anomaly detection and forecasting [17]. A trend of the time
series is a long-term increase or decrease, and seasonality is the
tendency of time series to exhibit behavior that repeats itself after
a certain time period [16]. For the purpose of this study, seasonal-
ity is assumed to be a periodic and recurrent pattern caused by the
weather. Traditional approaches to modeling seasonal time series
are to remove the seasonal variations using certain seasonal
adjustment method and then the models are scaled back using
the estimated seasonal effects for forecasting purposes [18]. The
most common decomposition techniques of time series plots are
additive decomposition and multiplicative decomposition. The
basis of additive decomposition is that the time series plot is an
addition of the three components, and that of multiplicative
decomposition is that the time series plot is a product of the indi-
vidual components. A time series data that is decomposed by addi-
tive decomposition technique is represented by the following
model.
Observ edSignal ¼ Trend þ Seasonality þ ResidualError ð1Þ
Similarly, a time series data decomposable by multiplicative
decomposition technique is represented as
Observ edSignal ¼ Trend  Seasonality  ResidualError ð2Þ
Brockwell & Davis presented a detailed explanation and proce-
dure for the estimation and the elimination of trend and seasonal
components in a time series data [19]. Both additive and multi-
plicative decomposition techniques are applied to the work order
counts and maintenance costs and are presented in Figs. 9 and
10, respectively. Figs. 9 and 10 consist of two plots each, which
consist of four subplots. The first subplot on either side is the
sequence plot, the second subplot on each side being the trend
component, while the third subplot is the seasonality component
and the last subplot being the residual error.
The trend component in Figs. 9 and 10 indicate that both work
order counts and maintenance costs follow an increasing trend
every year. The seasonal component for both work order counts
and maintenance costs indicate the presence of some seasonal cor-
relation, but do not follow the same pattern.
The residual component accounts for any outliers in the data.
Since the historic data indicates the presence of strong trend and
seasonal components, it is essential that the data to be used for
evaluating the performance of RTCM strategy be detrended and
deseasonalized prior to use. The detrended and deseasonalized
4 H.R. Alla et al. / International Journal of Mining Science and Technology xxx (xxxx) xxx

Fig. 7. Yearly and monthly box plot views of work orders.

Fig. 8. Autocorrelation plots for down hours and work orders.

Fig. 9. Time series decomposition of work orders.

work order counts and maintenance costs are shown in Figs. 11
and 12, respectively.
4. Analysis
The detrended and deseasonalized data are then used for com-
paring the performance of the RTCM strategy implemented at the
site. For this study, two years of historical data were used: 2017
represents data prior to the implementation of the RTCM strategy,
and 2018 represents the post implementation stage.
The sum of downtime duration and the number of downs in a
fleet of over 40 trucks in 2017 and 2018 are compared for the three
systems identified earlier. The difference in the total down hours
and number of downs between pre and post implementation for
the RTCM strategy was calculated for each of the 40 trucks and is
plotted as a histogram as shown in Fig. 13.
Q-Q (quantile-quantile) plot is one of the popular methods for
visualizing and assessing the normality of a distribution [20]. Q-
Q plots are plots of sample order statistics against some expected
quantiles from a standard normal distribution. The underlying the-
ory behind a normal probability plot is that the plot will be linear
except for random fluctuations in the data under the null hypoth-
esis. Any systematic deviation from linearity in the probability plot
indicates that the data are not normal [21]. If the difference his-
togram is normally distributed, all the points will lie on the red
diagonal line, or very close to the red diagonal line as seen in the
Q-Q scatter plots in Fig. 14. Normality tests are supplementary to

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 H.R. Alla et al. / International Journal of Mining Science and Technology xxx (xxxx) xxx 5

Fig. 10. Time series decomposition of down hours.

the graphical assessment of normality, and Kolmogrov-Smirnov

(K-S) test was performed on the data, the results of which comply
with those depicted in the Q-Q plots in Fig. 14.
For data that is normally distributed, a paired t-test was used to
test for a null hypothesis, and for other data, the Wilcoxon signed-
rank test was used to test for the null hypothesis. The null hypoth-
esis is that the mean difference between paired observations is
zero. When the mean difference is zero, the means of the two
Fig. 11. Detrended and deseasonalized number of downs from 2012 to 2018.
groups must also be equal. To determine whether the difference
between the population means is statistically significant, the p-
values obtained from the respective test are compared to a signif-
icance level. The significance level used in this study is 5% i.e. 0.05.
The p-values for each of the categories are presented in Table 1.

5. Results and discussions

Fig. 12. Detrended and deseasonalized down hours from 2012 to 2018.
The p-values less than or equal to 0.05 from the paired t-test or
Wilcoxon signed-rank test indicate that the null hypothesis can be
rejected for 95% confidence interval. This in turn indicates that
there is a statistically significant difference in down hours and
number of downs due to the implementation of RTCM strategy at
the mine site. Based on the results presented in Table 1, there

Fig. 13. Down hours and number of downs difference histogram plots.

Please cite this article as: H. R. Alla, R. Hall and D. B. Apel, Performance evaluation of near real-time condition monitoring in haul trucks, International
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6 H.R. Alla et al. / International Journal of Mining Science and Technology xxx (xxxx) xxx
Fig. 14. Down hours and number of downs difference Q-Q plots.
Table 1
p-values by failure category.
Down category Down hours Number of downs
Engine 0.4562 0.0424
Brakes 0.1884 0.0700
Dump 0.0411 0.0008
was a significant reduction in the number of down events for the
engine after the implementation of the RTCM strategy. Despite a
slight decrease in the down hours for engine in 2018, the improve-
ment cannot be attributed to RTCM strategy with statistical signif-
icance. Dump body is another category that has statistically
significant improvements in both the number of down events
and the downtime duration after the implementation of the RTCM
strategy. Although a reduction in the number of down events and
downtime duration was observed in the brakes, the higher p-value
obtained in the tests indicate that the difference in means cannot
be attributed to the RTCM strategy with 95% confidence. An impor-
tant thing to note is that the fault detection models at the site are
programmed by the user, and the parameters and thresholds could
have an impact on the identification and classification of the faults
by the RTCM strategy.
6. Conclusions
The data and results presented in the previous sections indi-
cated that RTCM strategy has proven to be successful in reducing
the number of down events and the total duration of downtime
for some of the failure categories chosen in this study. The results
have been confirmed by paired t-test or Wilcoxon signed-rank test
where applicable, and there was a statistically significant reduction
in the number of down events for engine and dump body related
problems, and significant reduction in the duration of downtime
for dump body related issues. Since the models implemented for
early detection of the onset of failures are defined by the user,
using advanced mathematical computations could lead to better
improvements in the remaining categories. The time series decom-
position of the data indicates the presence of a long-term trend
that is increasing in nature, which could be attributed to the aging
equipment. There is also a seasonal variation in the data, but the
maintenance cost and work order counts show a different pattern
towards the second half of the year. Wen et al. highlighted certain
issues with regular methods to decompose time series data such as
Please cite this article as: H. R. Alla, R. Hall and D. B. Apel, Performance evaluation of near real-time condition monitoring in haul trucks, International
Journal of Mining Science and Technology, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ijmst.2020.05.024
their inability to handle the seasonality fluctuation and shift effec-
tively and proposed a novel time series decomposition algorithm
to address such challenges [17]. The use of these techniques could
provide a better understanding of the complex seasonal variations
of the data.
Declaration of Competing Interest
The authors declare that they have no known competing finan-
cial interests or personal relationships that could have appeared
to influence the work reported in this paper.
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Please cite this article as: H. R. Alla, R. Hall and D. B. Apel, Performance evaluation of near real-time condition monitoring in haul trucks, International
Journal of Mining Science and Technology, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ijmst.2020.05.024