Stockyard Management

Stockpiles are a critical path in the material handling supply chain. Any efficiency gains related to stacking and reclaiming directly impact throughput and profitability. Our Smart Stockyard Management System (SMS) represents a significant advancement in managing a modern mined material stockyard, actively working at multiple material handling sites across the globe for a variety of mined materials. These deployments have resulted in many years of live operation with PLC level uptime; driven by our philosophy that only functions too complex to be performed within a PLC environment are performed by the SMS PC (ex. 3D stockpile modeling and environmental analysis). This puts the site owner in charge, providing a system that is accessible and maintainable by site operational staff and straightforward to support locally.

The cornerstone of this optimization is a highly accurate, volumetric stockpile modeling system, using scanning lasers. Optimization & maintenance benefits come from increased time-in-material, reduced slew cut turnaround times/air digging, and bucketwheel power spike prediction feature which reduces material spikes and stress on key mechanical systems. It also provides a suite of high-level operational tools for planning, and control of material flows based on data like age, quality, grade, etc.

After using all major scanning / SMS systems QCA believes this system is superior to other options for the following reasons:

Proven, Mature & Reliable – Running since 2014 and being used to process almost 300 million tons of mined materials per annum (including largest coal terminal in the world) with PLC level uptime (99.89%).

PLC-centric – Our philosophy to perform everything possible in the PLC in an open transparent fashion is unique and allows the clients’ team to manage the system. Other systems use scanning computers to control the machine which reduces reliability and creates reliance on specialized labor. Our system keeps your most reliable equipment in control of the machine at all times.

Open & Sensor Agnostic – We leave our solutions open, which future-proofs your investment, allowing best technologies proven in complex outdoor environments to be leveraged.

Modular Design – Ability to deploy SMS system in stages. For example, taking a customer site that is fully manual and adding partial automation, PLC sequencing, and advanced automations supporting a variety of complex stacking and reclaiming methods and optimizations.

Accuracy & Environmental Performance – You receive the best of both worlds. Better accuracy and faster response of LiDAR plus Radar-level Environmental performance achieved using proprietary environmental filtering of multiple laser inputs.

Local Support – QCA’s team owns both the project delivery and on-going system maintenance and support. This ensures your investment remains working as intended but also proactively improved over time, driving additional value after the initial project.

Faster Deployment Time – Our simulation and deployment process is pre-defined and eliminates onsite sensor calibration, allowing commissioning to be completed very quickly, limiting expensive downtime, driving value quickly and consistently