Work Management System

Sentient was approached by one of the world’s largest iron ore corporations operating in the Pilbara to help achieve their goal of substantially increasing iron ore production through automation.

CHALLENGE

• To achieve this, they are implementing autonomous heavy-haul locomotives.
• Immense challenge of having to install autonomous equipment on hundreds of locomotives with minimum disruption to production.
• The original installation work methods were recorded on paper, so the distribution of revisions was complex, time consuming and a possible source of discrepancies.
• Users and project management could not easily see the overall progress of installations which impacted on shift planning, materials management and change notice identification – all of which could impact on cost and schedule if not managed from shift to shift.

SOLUTION

• Working together with both management and installations team members, we developed a synchronised task management system.
• Toolsets were developed so that the system content is imported directly from existing procedures contained in Microsoft Word format.
• The system tracks completed tasks to allow for transparent and regular measurement of progress.
• Multiple users can view the current progress of any locomotive, update their work progress on specific tasks, set alerts and make comments
• Work data can be exported into spreadsheet report formats for in-depth analysis and specific reports.
• Supervisors, quality control personnel and project management are able to see the overall progress of installations, identify bottlenecks and potential issues, monitor work shifts and manage just-in-time material supply.
• The application is synced across the workshop’s local network as well as online, so that all devices running the application have the most up-to-date information.

OUTCOME

• The equipment installation was the critical path, but since the introduction of the Work Management System and improved processes, software has become the critical path.
• The system is now the one easily-accessible source of truth for all installation information.
• Reports can be generated which show the who, what and when of equipment installations, as well as tracking the software versions of all relevant software in the systems.
• There are now powerful data mining options for future modifications and planning.
• Custom reports can be created to show key information for future requirements.
• These reports are available from a web-based reporting tool, giving access to all stakeholders without the overhead of software installation.
• Significant contribution to reducing installation times from original planned durations.

Sentient’s software has helped us save over a thousand hours of loco installation time. Using our standard software, it would have taken weeks to properly implement any changes to our procedures. The generated reports allowed us to quickly ascertain which tasks had not been completed, and this would not have been possible using our standard approach.

Site QA Manager