From Creamer Media in Johannesburg, this is the Real Economy Report.

Sashnee Moodley:

Britehouse Mobility’s ATAJO OnEdge goes deep into the tribology of oil with its new live conditioning monitoring product suite for efficiently detecting oil contamination, and turning information about the contamination properties into insightful, actionable data for mining operations and their equipment or mobile units.

Trent Roebeck:

Britehouse Mobility business unit lead and manager Marco Capazario says that the ATAJO OnEdge application is the ideal solution for trackless mobile mining equipment, in that it enables opencast and underground mining operations to use sensing technology to detect issues in the mining machinery and fleet, with a specific focus on live conditioning monitoring of oil for contamination, which are then converted into actionable data through the ATAJO OnEdge application.

Britehouse Mobility business unit lead and manager Marco Capazario…

We specialise in oil monitoring. So, looking at where there’s oil contamination and being able to detect failures, and then sending those breaches through to the mobile application, whereby the technicians, engineers and artisans can take the necessary action, in terms of corrective action on their equipment.

From a data processing perspective: all of that data is centralised and aggregated, so that it’s really result-driven data that we’re feeding through to the reliability engineers. And that’s data that they can take action on. So, it’s really about streamlining the data and providing them with relevant data that is meaningful to them and their function within engineering.

Trent Roebeck:

Mining operations can use the ATAJO OnEdge mobile application, or on-premise data – for those who do not wish to store any information in the cloud – to detect any oil contamination that may lead to equipment failure with its live conditioning monitoring of equipment oil, in real time.

This allows mining operations to act on data that indicates oil contamination in equipment or mine site fleet vehicles – including information about the severity of contamination – which will allow the organisation to remove the machine for repair, ensuring that maintenance is conducted in a timeous manner, and that equipment uptime is sustained.

Britehouse Mobility business unit lead and manager Marco Capazario…

What the sensing technology on the engine transmission and hydraulics really enables, is the ability – in real-time – to detect contamination and material changes within the fluid properties in oil, and the lubrication properties. What that means, and what that allows, is for the reliability team to essentially detect failures, prior to them happening, and to take corrective action.

So, they can pull equipment out timeously, and they can take the necessary action, and that then, therefore, saves components from premature failure, and ultimately improves plant reliability and uptime.

Trent Roebeck:

The ATAJO OnEdge application can also be incorporated with various original equipment manufacturer (OEM) machines that may be used at a mining operation. In addition to delving deep into the tribology of oil monitoring, Capazario says that the application can also assist in monitoring other complexities of the consumables in mining machinery, such as level gauge monitoring and tyre pressure monitoring.

Britehouse Mobility business unit lead and manager Marco Capazario…

I think that it is quite complementary to what the OEMs are currently providing. There is absolutely some stepover or crossover, so to speak. But we are really going deep into the consumables of the machinery, and the running and maintenance costs of the machinery, outside of the electronic control unit (ECU) data itself. 

Sashnee Moodley:

That’s Creamer Media’s Real Economy Report. Join us again next week for more news and insight into South Africa’s real economy. Don’t forget to listen to the audio version of our Engineering News daily email newsletter.