Caterpillar, Thiess and WesTrac Celebrate Drilling Milestone

Some weeks ago, Caterpillar, Thiess and WesTrac officials gathered at the Mt. Arthur South coal mine in New South Wales, Australia, to celebrate a major autonomous milestone three years in the making. Leading global mining services provider, Thiess surpassed 1 million meters autonomously drilled using Cat® MineStar™ technologies installed on a Cat MD6250 and two Cat MD6310 drills.

The journey toward autonomous drilling at the mine didn’t happen overnight say Caterpillar. A multistep evolution toward automation saw the three companies implementing a building block approach beginning with the MD6250 drill. This required close collaboration between Thiess, WesTrac and Caterpillar, not only to implement technology but also to develop processes specific to autonomous operations, work through change management and develop new training programs for site personnel. These processes helped Thiess move from staffed to autonomous owning and operating procedures for the drills, including safe work procedures.

“Thiess’s commitment to this project and openness for deep collaboration has been a driving force behind its success. We worked closely with Thiess and WesTrac to ensure our autonomous solution would meet their key performance indicator goals along the way.” said Sean McGinnis, vice president and general manager of technology and global sales support for Cat MineStar Solutions.

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