Wenco, a subsidiary of Hitachi Construction Machinery, has provided the fleet-management system at Polyus' Olimpiada mine since 2008. Within the first year, shift productivity of shovels increased up to 12.27%, while shift productivity of trucks increased up to 10.47%, it said, leading to further installations at the Titimukhta mine in 2009 and its Blagodatnoye mine in 2012. Together, these sites operate more than 150 mobile mining units across three open pits.

“Polyus evaluated the potential effectiveness of Wenco’s BenchManager high-precision on-board system and selected the system as a result,” said Iosif Tabakman, Wenco regional manager for the Commonwealth of Independent States region. 

BenchManager uses GNSS positioning to precisely determine the shovel’s orientation and dig limits, providing operators with accurate, real-time face positions and cut/fill information. It pairs with BenchView office software, which manages files and gives engineers real-time mining progress data to assist in planning. 

Along with BenchManager, Wenco has also been contracted to provide its Drill Navigation guidance system to the Blagodatnoye mine. This site operates several Atlas Copco DML/LP drills to handle the site’s extensive drilling and blasting needs. The northern climactic conditions at this site require Polyus machine operators to rapidly and safely navigate their drills to target without lengthy field surveying. 

BenchManager and Drill Navigation will be installed at Blagodatnoye mine by the end of 2015.