Abstract
With the increase of sensor data and the installation of wireless infrastructure within underground mines, predictive maintenance practices are beginning to be applied to the maintenance process of mining equipment. However, the tools supplied by researchers or industry practitioners are often hardly understandable by the experts who will ultimately use them. This is because most tools were developed in a vacuum and ignored the active maintenance process or realistic user tasks. In this study, we interviewed 15 maintenance experts from 7 mining sites across East-Canada to investigate the maintenance planning process currently implemented in Canadian mines along with identified maintenance best practices. We documented experts’ feedback on the process, their expectations regarding the introduction of predictive maintenance in mining, and the usability of existing computerized maintenance management systems (CMMS). Then, we developed a working prototype for a CMMS which offers a suite of solutions to facilitate planning and scheduling of mobile equipment. The prototype was tailored to the maintenance expert’s tasks thanks to an incremental development process which was monitored and approved by maintenance stakeholders. We conducted user tests with 9 maintenance experts and found that our prototype achieved a high level of usability and efficiency in preventive and predictive maintenance. Our work shows the potential for integrating future predictive maintenance tools into the mine of the 21st century.