While there have been many companies providing services to maintain and repair the undercarriage, they have never reached the same level of versatility as tyre and rim management software systems, and are all too often restricted by OEM control. Minesite or equipment operators have been reliant on third parties to perform undercarriage inspections and provide PDF reports for each machine, as and when inspectors can be available onsite. Some minesites have their own internal inspection team to perform the inspections, but not the software to make the service truly efficient.

Undercarriage on a machine can make up more than 50% of the maintenance costs over the machine's life time. This is a significant expense to any minesite or machine operator and a prime area of potential savings. On a D11 dozer over a 20,000 hour period, the engine will be rebuilt possibly once at an approximate cost of $250,000. The undercarriage however, will be replaced around four times, at a cost of about $250,000 each time, thus the undercarriage maintenance cost over the same 20,000hr period is four times larger than the maintenance cost of the engine*. This makes undercarriage management a significant area for opportunistic improvement.

Effective undercarriage management has suffered from a lack of inspectors with the necessary skill level to complete the inspection properly, as well as a lack of software systems to record and manage the data collected. The data being collected also has not been enough for effective management and for reliably assessing and forecasting equipment health. Many systems have also been OEM systems, created to manage the companies specific brand of machines only, and utilise the data collected internally for the company's own benefit.

The future of undercarriage management lies with the end user, the maintenance or asset manager on the mine-site, the one wanting to operate the tracked machine at the most efficient cost per hour in the given job site environment. This is where TrackTreads is the answer. The TrackTreads system gives end users accurate measurements and reporting on the health of undercarriage components. It allows you to forecast remaining life of components and replacement dates, manage task lists of recommended actions to preserve budget component lives and view overall fleet health at a glance. Overall cost analysis for each family of tracked machine is available, with drill down capability to detail transactions of every component. With full traceability and accountability for chains and frames, you can see not only where each chain and frame is now, but where it has been, and what maintenance has been performed on it.

With an extensive and ever growing library of OEM and after market component wear rates, TrackTreads provides accurate performance analysis of components against industry standards in a given environment.

TrackTreads is a sister company to InfoTrak who have a long history of developing and supporting oil analysis software for the same heavy earthmoving industry. We know your industry and your machines and have developed an undercarriage management system to bring you the advantages of current technology.

TrackTreads gives you the support services to help overcome the current undercarriage management challenges and move to the future environment.

* Rough assumptions are made about the operating environment of the machine and operator techniques.

 

TrackTreads

Phone: 03 9553 1055
Email: info@tracktreads.com
www.tracktreads.com