The Relationship Between Breakdowns and Production, and the Detection of Breakdown Units in Mining Vehicles Using Machine Learning

Erol Gödur, Yalçın Çebi, Ahmet Hakan Onur

The mining industry relies heavily on large-scale machinery, making operational efficiency highly sensitive to equipment breakdowns and maintenance interruptions. Such breakdowns directly affect production performance, operational costs, and planning accuracy. Therefore, the ability to predict machinery downtime particularly for haul trucks, loaders, drilling machinery, and dozers used in open-pit operations is essential for improving productivity and ensuring reliable mine planning. This study aims to predict machinery breakdowns and estimate the annual total number of breakdowns using machine-learning techniques applied to a fully digitalized dataset of 16,027 breakdown and maintenance records collected from an open-pit coal mine. A Random Forest classification model was developed to identify the breakdown unit for each event, achieving an accuracy of 94%, while a Random Forest regression model estimated the annual breakdown counts with an R2 value of 0.98. In addition, the relationships between breakdown frequency and key production indicators were examined using linear regression and correlation analyses. The results show a strong association between run-of-mine quantities and coal production, a moderate relationship between stripping activity and breakdown frequency, and negligible linear relationships between breakdowns and production volumes. Overall, the findings demonstrate that integrating machine-learning models with operational mining data can significantly enhance predictive maintenance, reduce unplanned downtime, and improve production planning in open-pit mining operations.