Cat Teams With FTP Solutions For Mining Program

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With Cat MineStar, you can keep track of all of the equipment working on a mining operation, whether it be drills and excavators or large mining trucks, like the Caterpillar 785D. (Photo courtesy of Caterpillar.)

Caterpillar recently announced that it’s teaming up with FTP Solutions, which is based out of Perth, Western Australia, to create mining technologies specifically focused on monitoring and management that will serve as a part of the Cat MineStar System. Both companies are bringing their own proprietary technologies to the table in an effort to give customers and advanced system that serves as the networking backbone to their mining operations. In fact, Sean McGinnis, a product manager with Caterpillar’s mining technology group, said in a press release that the idea is to “enable mines to move close to enterprise network availability,” which means giving companies more information to work with to make better decisions on the fly.

Pilot Program

This new offering from Caterpillar and FTP Solutions is starting off with a bit smaller scope by only offering the service to operations in Australia in 2017, but the plan is to expand that to mining operations around the world throughout 2018. However, the companies have already been testing out and using this service as a part of mining operations that utilize Cat Command, which a feature within the larger Cat MineStar System, but they will now extend that to Fleet, Terrain, and Detect applications. The ultimate goal is to integrate monitoring and management into the overall mining network in a seamless way that enhances the overall experience rather than making it more complicated.

Cat MineStar

Generally, the Cat MineStar System is all about giving mining operation managers more data to work with and help them set up something of a control center to overlook every aspect of the operation. With this system, you can keep track of every piece of Caterpillar equipment on a given worksite, keep track of what those machines are doing and how well they’re performing, and then use that information to decide what actions to take in the future.

A major benefit of Cat MineStar is that it can help you save money by making sure all of your machines are up and running at all times, which means that your operators will stay productive throughout the entire work day. But you also get this added benefit of ensuring the safety of your operators as well. It’s no secret that mining operations can be dangerous, so being able to keep track of where your workers are at all times and getting alerted to potential issues can help prevent injuries.

Source: Caterpillar