Imagine examining a machine, ticking off each item on the maintenance checklist and making special notes of anything that needs special attention.

Then imagine being able to look up the mine’s parts inventory to see if the necessary parts for that special attention are available and, if they are not, ordering them there and then.

This is all available to miners with the proliferation of PDAs and the WiFi networks needed to make them work.

Indeed, the WiFi solutions are getting simpler, especially if a mine owner decides to go down the hotspot route instead of having WiFi throughout the mine.

This means a worker’s PDA will upload and download data whenever it comes within range of one of these hotspots.

In metalliferous mines, where intrinsic safety is not such an issue, it seems a wireless router from Dick Smith can suffice.

In the underground coal mining space, companies such as NLT and Becker NCS have their own intrinsically safe WiFi offerings.

Mincom chief strategy officer Jennifer Tejada said PDAs could be a big step towards making mines safer.

She uses the example of a miner seeing something unsafe underground needing urgent attention.

In the old days he might make a note of it on the back of a matchbook or a scrap of paper. On returning to the surface he could forget about it. Maybe not find the note until the next day. By then, two or three shifts may have gone underground.

Instead, the miner could make a note on his PDA and have that information uploaded the moment he could access the mine’s WiFi network.

“Putting the information into the hands of the guys in the field reduces the risk,” Tejada said.

She said it also could be applied to maintenance situations.

Instead of ticking off items on a paper checklist, workers instead do the same thing on a PDA. That information can then be automatically uploaded to the mine’s computer system.

Any work orders, if necessary, can be generated immediately – or the moment the device goes near a hotspot, if that is the approach the mine has taken.

If a part needs to be found, the worker can check the mine’s inventory to see if it is available and, if not, place an order.

What if the workers are “old school” and not too keen to take on these new-fangled PDA things? They understand the limitation of the old forms but still feel more comfortable using them.

“These are new-fangled PDAs with the old looking forms on them,” Tejada said.

“We have a solution called Mincom Mobile Field Data Platform that takes the existing forms used anywhere on the site.”

Bucyrus is another company that has taken the PDA approach, although it calls its intrinsically safe offering the Miner’s Digital Assistant.

The MDA sports a serial port that allows direct connection to embedded controls such as Bucyrus’ Programmable Mining Controllers.

A diagnostic port allows monitoring of communications and signal quality and a display of the clients logged into the network.

Becker NCS managing director Tony Napier said his company was working on an intrinsically safe PDA too.

He believes there is no reason why PDAs cannot become more widely spread in the industry.

The technology is proven – after all, couriers use them all the time – and WiFi is rapidly becoming more widespread in mines above and below ground.

However, Napier said, the problem was getting the applications for them.

“We’ve found from users out there that there has been some proprietary software written for them,” he said.

“What I’ve seen out there is the mine trying to replicate the ‘plod sheets’ on PDA.

“There are others out there with bar code scanners.

“From a maintenance perspective you can look back to the maintenance records on a particular piece of equipment by scanning the barcode on it.”