Mining

Why is pit-to-port throughput capped by truck availability, not the mine plan?

The ore body is rarely the constraint. The haul fleet is. Lifting throughput is usually about availability, not more trucks.

June 20264 min read

The binding constraint is the fleet

Value moves along a chain, pit to crusher to stockpile to rail to port, and the chain runs at the speed of its slowest link. That link is usually truck and shovel availability: idle time, bunching, and unplanned breakdowns, not the mine plan.

Find the bottleneck unit, do not average it away

Fleet effectiveness is availability, performance, and quality combined, and the useful move is to find the single unit holding back the chain rather than reporting a fleet average that hides it.

Underneath sit availability, utilisation, and mean time between failures, the measures that tell you whether more trucks or better uptime is the real answer.

Where the ERP closes the loop

On Hudace, maintenance, parts, and dispatch share one platform, so condition-based maintenance replaces a fixed calendar. Xenon AI predicts a component failure from telemetry and recommends a window, which a planner approves against the mine plan.

Safety-critical sequencing stays with people. Any dispatch help is advisory, in line with the zero-harm expectation the ICMM principles set.

The numbers to watch

Tie fleet performance to the figure that reaches the P&L.

Fleet OEE

Availability x Performance x Quality for the haul fleet. Locates the bottleneck unit.

Availability %

Uptime / scheduled time. The loss bucket breakdowns hit first.

MTBF / MTTR

Mean time between failures and to repair. Rising MTBF and falling MTTR mean more productive hours.

Cost per tonne moved

Total fleet cost / tonnes hauled. The number that ties uptime to profit.

See higher fleet uptime on Hudace

Talk to our team about uniting maintenance, parts, and dispatch on one platform.

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