Dash dodges weeks of downtime: plug-and-play dashboard cheap and easy to install.

• Author: Louiseize, Kelly
• Position: NEWS - Steve Sullivan of Newmont Mining Corp.

Kirkland Lake-They say the cream always rises to the top.

But at Newmont Mining Corp.'s Holloway Gold Mine site, 60 kilometres north of Kirkland Lake, success is measured several thousand metres below surface.

Steve Sullivan is a first-class trouble shooting mechanic who has been with the company for 10 years. He maintains underground load haul dump equipment, drills and scissor lifts.

Sullivan has developed a way to reduce costs and maybe even save lives by developing a "plug-and-play dash," which can be inserted into an underground vehicle's dashboard.

When a machine is laid up, it usually costs the company $5,000 an hour in lest revenues. In some cases, the bill lands somewhere around $200,000. The supplier usually has to send a representative who then often has to order parts. That can take weeks.

The plug-and-play dash takes about $8,000 and 20 minutes to install.

The idea came when Sullivan was asked to upgrade the electrical wiring panel of the Holloway mine's mobile equipment. He soon realized it would not be an easy project, requiring far more work than projected.

The end result was an electrical dashboard that reroutes all the wiring into one main panel.

"It is similar to the dash in your car," Sullivan says.

When the system mal-functions or becomes damaged, it is now a matter of replacing the main panel instead of trying to identify a specific problem, which costs time and money.

The original system on the mobile equipment was labour-intensive and susceptible to damage, especially when workers were manipulating the machine by remote control to the stope areas, Sullivan says.

The panel may also be practical for the forestry sector, since both industries experience the same downtime loss from mobile equipment. If an employee can...