A CRITICAL STUDY ON AVAILABILITY AND CAPACITY UTILIZATION OF SIDE DISCHARGE LOADERS FOR PERFORMANCE ASSESSMENT

Sankha Sarkhel, U.K. Dey

Abstract: Improvement in production and productivity has become an important aspect for today’s coal industry especially in case of underground coal mines. The record of production and productivity of Indian underground coal mines over the years is dismal, to say the least. Mechanization in loading system has made possible major breakthroughs in underground coal mining technology. Side Discharge Loaders (SDL) is now used as a loading machine for intermediate mechanization in underground coal mining. To meet the production and productivity issues the SDL machine should be maintained effectively and efficiently to have maximum availability. Higher availability of machine shall enable optimum utilization thus increasing production and productivity of these capital intensive items.. This paper intends to identify and highlight the various factors and problems affecting performance of SDL machine. Further an attempt is made to calculate the percentage availability and utilization of SDL deployed in underground coal mines and analyzes the contributing factors to improve the overall efficiency. In addition, the problems of SDL application, breakdown and its management have also been identified and resolved in these studies to propose suitable measures for improving them.

Keywords: Side Discharge Loaders, performance, assessment, scheduled hours, maintenance hours, available hours, percentage availability, percentage utilization, production efficiency, operating efficiency, management efficiency, overall efficiency

DOI: https://doi.org/10.15623/ijret.2015.0407041