Noting the complexity of South Africa’s mining environment, which is typically associated with its sizable value chain, telematics solutions provider Webfleet sales director Justin Manson advocates for greater safety and efficiency for mining vehicles to help accelerate sector growth.

Highlighting the company’s safety expertise, Manson notes the challenge of ensuring that mine vehicles – ranging from small two-seater pick-up trucks, to larger tipper trucks, staff transportation and supervisor vehicles – do not deviate from travelling at prohibited speeds.

Through the use of technology, the company is able to use geofencing – virtually confining specific vehicles within certain boundaries – as a way of advancing workplace safety. Geofencing also serves to flag vehicle use in prohibited areas.

“Accurate reporting and the ability to detect drivers who exceed certain speed limits in particular zones is a key solution that Webfleet provides. We are also working on developing the capacity to stop vehicles from starting when this particular infringement takes place,” he points out.

Webfleet’s solutions also focus on monitoring driver behaviours using AI-enabled cameras and have the ability to alert fleet managers to bad driver behaviour, such as whether a driver is distracted, driving at an unsafe following distance or changing lanes on a road without indicating.

“There are various things we can do from a camera technology perspective to promote driver safety, especially because you would typically have a plethora of people in the back of a vehicle or bus who are being transported to and from mine sites,” explains Manson.

Webfleet emphasises the significance of AI, particularly when assessing current and historic traffic data, whose consideration plays a key role in the design of accurate traffic signals.

From a fleet management perspective, Manson highlights that Webfleet also provides solutions that focus on predictive maintenance, whereby mines are assisted to understand the profile of each of their mine vehicles, including the mileage that it is doing and the terrain on which the vehicle has been used.

Coupled with this are efforts to understand and gather data from the electronic control unit of a mine vehicle to make prudent maintenance decisions.

Meanwhile, according to the company, there is also a geological benefit attributed to the use of AI owing to its ability to engage in predictive modelling, thereby ensuring that mines are equipped with an accurate understanding of the quantities of ore being mined and ensuring that the company is able to get its expected tonnages.

With these and other considerations – which include a reduction in road accidents, maintenance costs and fuel bills – Manson contends that AI can be used to drive down maintenance costs and bolster the economic performance of the mining sector.

Criminality, Data Reliability, Broader Perspectives

Notable criminal enterprises operating within South Africa’s mining sector involve mining trucks making unauthorised stops, followed by the offloading of a certain amount of ore which will be collected by a third party for illegal resale.

Regular rocks or other low-value material are then used to replace the ore that was offloaded to ensure that the truck arrives at the next weighbridge weighing the same as when it was weighed on a mine site in an effort to make logistics appear above board.

To combat this, Webfleet has undertaken efforts to geofence the sites where mine vehicles are authorised to offload products, and has also enabled systems that disallow a transport truck’s power takeoff – used to power trailer offloading systems – from working outside of an allocated geofence. This ensures loads can only be offloaded at predetermined locations.

Webfleet says that it places a great emphasis on ensuring that its data is accurate and reliable and is also able to integrate with third party data systems.

The company has International Organisation for Standardisation 27001 certification, which assesses a company’s level of data security, privacy and systems hardware uptime.