Economic lifetime of a drilling machine: a case study on mining industry

Underground mines use many different types of machinery duringthe drift mining processes of drilling, charging, blasting, loading, scaling andbolting. Drilling machines play a critical role in the mineral extraction processand thus are important economically. However, as the machines age, theirefficiency and effectiveness decrease, negatively affecting productivity andprofitability and increasing total cost. Hence, the economic replacementlifetime of the machine is a key performance indicator. This paper introducesan optimisation model that gives the optimal lifetime for a drilling machine. Acase study has been done at an underground Swedish mine to identify theeconomic replacement time of a drilling machine. It considers the purchaseprice, maintenance and operation costs, and the machine’s second-hand value.Findings show that the economic replacement lifetime of a drilling machine inthis mine is 96 months. The proposed model can be used for other undergroundmining machines.Validerad; 2015; Nivå 1; Bibliografisk uppgift: Hussan Al-Chalabi received his BEng in Mechanical Engineering from Mosul University, Iraq in 1994 and MSc in Mechanical Engineering in Thermal Power from Mosul University, Iraq in 2008. Then he joined the Department of Mechanical Engineering at Mosul University as a lecturer. Since 2011, he joined the Division of Operation, Maintenance and Acoustics at LTU as a doctoral student. Jan Lundberg is a Professor of Machine Elements at Luleå University of Technology and also a Professor in Operation and Maintenance with focus on product development. During the years 1983–2000, his research concerned mainly about engineering design in the field of machine elements in industrial environments. During the years 2000–2006, his research concerned mainly about industrial design, ergonomic and related problems as cultural aspects of design and modern tools for effective industrial design in industrial environments. From 2006 and forward, his research is completely focused on maintenance issues like methods for measuring failure sources, how to do design out maintenance and how to design for easy maintenance. Adam Jonsson is a Senior Lecturer in the Department of Engineering Sciences and Mathematics, Luleå University of Technology, Sweden. He received his PhD in Statistics in 2008. His research is in applied probability and social welfare economics.; 20150224 (hasham)