NCL gets CIL’s first universal equipment simulator

New Delhi: Northern Coalfields Limited, a subsidiary company of Coal India Limited, has installed a 'Universal Equipment Simulator' at its Central Excavation Training Institute (CETI) in company's Singrauli headquarters. The first of its kind in the CIL fold, the simulator will impart simulation training to dragline, shovel and dozer operators.

Inspecting the installation of the new simulator, CMD NCL PK Sinha, Director (Technical/Operations) Gunadhar Pandey and Director (Finance & Personnel) NN Thakur visited CETI on Wednesday. They inspected the new installation and got a hands-on using in-cab controls.

Sinha said that the new universal simulator will contribute significantly to the safety of operators and valuable Heavy Earth Moving Machines (HEMMs). He also said that NCL will extend its training capabilities to other subsidiaries of CIL.

How the Universal Equipment Simulator works

The operators will get hands-on training for manoeuvring the heavy earthmovers through the new Universal Simulator. The equipment can simulate different Heavy Earth Moving Machinery (HEMM) and a variety of mine and weather-specific simulations. The new simulator simulates rough terrain, bumps and jerks, slippery terrain, rain, a sudden gush of windblown dust and other similar conditions during the training. The aim is to equip operators with the skills to manoeuvre the earthmovers in real-life settings of an opencast coal mine.

NCL had installed another simulator in 2012

Notably, NCL had installed a 'Dumper Simulator' back in 2012 and now with the addition of the 'Universal Equipment Simulator,' the company boasts of being the only subsidiary of CIL to have developed a complete in-house facility for training of dragline, shovel, dumper and dozer operators.

More than 3,000 dumper operators from across the subsidiaries of Coal India, including the operators of NCL, have undergone simulation training through dumper simulators.