Statistical methods for evaluating the effect of

operators on energy efficiency of mining

machines
Maryam Abdi Oskouei*1 and Kwame Awuah-Offei2
Research has recognised operators skill as important factors affecting performance and energy
efficiency of mining equipment. Modern monitoring tools generate large, highly variable, and,
often, skewed energy efficiency data sets. Well-conceived statistical tests should be used to
assess the effect of operators on energy efficiency in such situations. However, in many cases in
the mining literature, the choice of statistical tests to evaluate operator effects has not been
systematic and rigorous and, often, the underlying assumptions of these tests have not been
examined before their use. This work provides a systematic method, synthesised from the
statistical literature, to rigorously evaluate the effect of operators on energy efficiency of mining
equipment. Mine engineers and managers can use this method to evaluate whether differences
exist in energy efficiency of their operators given sample data and focus on operator training, if
they find cause to improve operator performance.
Keywords: Energy efficiency, Mining equipment, Operators effect, Mining equipment performance, Statistical tests

Introduction
US Department of Energy (DOE) energy bandwidth
analysis shows that the US mining industry consumes
about 365bn kW h year21 (1246tn Btu year21) and there
is a potential to reduce the annual energy consumption to
169bn kW h (579tn Btu), which is about 46% of current
annual energy consumption. Digging equipment such as
hydraulic shovels, cable shovels, draglines, continuous
mining machines, and long-wall mining machines consume about 23bn kW h (79tn Btu) annually and, using a
practical minimum (the so-called 2/3 rule), about 44% of
this can be saved (U.S. Department of Energy (DOE),
2007). The high potential for energy savings in mining
operations, particularly digging operations, has motivated mining companies to identify opportunities for
improving performance and energy efficiency.
Different indicators, such as energy efficiency and
specific energy, are used to describe the performance of
digging equipment and operators. Generally, energy
efficiency of an equipment or operation is defined as the
ratio of useful work done (energy output) to the input
energy (Zhu and Yin, 2008). In cases where either energy
output or input cannot be measured easily, proxy
parameters are used in their place. Table 1 shows several
examples of this approach in the literature (Muro et al.,
2002; Awuah-Offei et al., 2011; Acaroglu et al., 2008; Iai
and Gertsch, 2013).
1
2

University of Iowa, USA

Missouri University of Science and Technology, USA.

*Corresponding author, email maryam-abdioskouei@uiowa.edu

2014 Institute of Materials, Minerals and Mining

Published by Maney on behalf of the Institute
Received 6 January 2014; accepted 31 May 2014
DOI 10.1179/1743286314Y.0000000067

Specific energy (energy required to produce unit

volume/mass of rock/soil) is widely used in excavation,
tunnel boring, and soil cutting to measure efficiency of
excavation, boring, or cutting processes (Muro et al.,
2002; Acaroglu et al., 2008). For instance, Muro et al.
(2002) in designing an experiment to estimate the steady
state cutting performance, for varying cutting depth for
a disc cutter bit, used specific energy as the measure of
performance. Acaroglu et al. (2008) also used specific
energy of a disc cutter for predicting the performance of
tunnel boring machines (TBMs). Specific energy has also
been used in drilling (Teale, 1965; Dupriest and
Koederitz, 2005), shovel excavation (Awuah-Offei
et al., 2005; Karpuz et al., 1992), and ripping (Iai and
Gertsch, 2013). Specific energy is the inverse of energy
efficiency, where material produced (payload) is used as
a proxy for energy output. Hence, higher specific energy
(or lower energy efficiency) is undesirable.
Operating conditions, mine planning and design,
equipment characteristics and operators practice are
factors that can affect the performance of digging
equipment (Lumley, 2005; Bogunovic and Kecojevic,
2011; Awuah-Offei et al., 2011; Hettinger and Lumley,
1999; Kizil, 2010) (Fig. 1). In a given mine, maximising
energy efficiency by changing the operating condition is
difficult (e.g. changing blasting practices to change
fragmentation) and sometimes impossible (e.g. climatic
conditions). Also optimising the equipment mechanism
can be costly. Mine planning and design is a viable
way to maximise equipment efficiency. However, it is not
always possible to achieve this objective. Of all
these factors, operators practice and performance is,

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1 Factors that affect the performance of digging equipment

probably, the most inexpensive factor to change.

Training operators to improve their performance is a
relatively cheap and valid approach in many cases.
Before embarking on this type of improvement, it is
critical to first establish that operators actually have an
effect on energy efficiency (i.e. different operators have
different energy efficiency numbers). This is not trivial in
the presence of high data variability and asymmetry.
Often, large data on the indicator of performance (in
this case, energy efficiency) can be acquired from machine
monitoring systems. As these data are highly variable
and, often, skewed, care must be taken not to draw
conclusions on the effect of operators on energy efficiency
just from comparing the sample means or performing
statistical tests without considering the limitations of such
tests. Such analysis can result in drawing incorrect
conclusion and making poor decisions. Statistical analysis of data collected from monitoring systems is a
common and valid tool that can be used to study the
effect of operators on equipment performance. Many
authors have assessed and compared operators performance using different criteria and statistical methods to
identify best strategies to improve the efficiency of
operations (Patnayak et al., 2007; Komljenovic et al.,
2010; Awuah-Offei et al., 2011).
Patnayak et al. (2007) used one-way analysis of
variance (ANOVA) and Tamhanes T2 pairwise test to
compare the average hoist and crowd motor power of
four teams of operators to assess the effect of operators
skills on shovel performance. They did not check the
normality of the data and the equality of variances (the
two conditions for ANOVA test) prior to conducting the
ANOVA test. Komljenovic et al. (2010) presented an
operator performance indicator (OPI) that specifically
evaluates dragline productivity and energy consumption. OPI was defined as the dragline production divided
by the dragline energy consumption in a given period of
time. By assuming that the OPIs follow the t-distribution (when number of operators are less than 30)
different confidence intervals were used to create a
classification system to evaluate operators performance
based on OPI (Komljenovic et al., 2010). This is
essentially the t-test, which requires the data to be
normal and equal variances both assumptions were
not verified. Awuah-Offei et al. (2011) used t-tests to
study the differences in the fuel consumption and total
cycle time of operators. Similar to Komljenovic (2010),
they did not test for normality and equality of variance
between operators.
The suggested methods in these works are limited to
certain conditions because of assumptions made of the
nature of the data (e.g. Komljenovic et al. (2010)

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assuming OPI follows a t-distribution). The authors

could not find any work that provides general guidance
on how to quantitatively evaluate (test) the effect of
operators on energy efficiency of mining equipment.
Data collected from digging equipment tend to have
high variability. Making accurate inferences on whether
different operators have significantly different energy
efficiencies using the digging equipment in the presence
of high variability and data skewness can be challenging.
In this work, a process to evaluate the effect of operators
on energy efficiency of mining equipment is formulated.
This process suggests the best statistical test for
comparing the operators considering the properties of
the data set.

Proposed approach
Any statistics based approach to study the effect of
operators on energy efficiency relies on adequate and
reliable data. Such data are available, these days, from
equipment monitoring systems, provided care is taken to
document who is running the machine at any time and the
operating conditions. However, the data are often highly
variable and skewed. Any approach to study the effect of
operator practice on the energy efficiency of digging
equipment should be able to handle the high variability in
the measured data of the performance metric. For
example, a simple comparison of the sample means of
the metric is invalid because it does not address whether
the difference in means of the metric for the operators is
by chance (due to the sample) or is significant.
The metric could be any of the examples described in
the previous section, which includes t kW21 h21 for
draglines, tons/gal for truck and shovel systems, and
specific energy for drilling and TBM operations. The
analytical approach should be a function of the
characteristics of the observed data. The specific measure
of energy efficiency is of little consequence. The approach
presented in this section can be applied to any mining
machine so long as adequate and reliable data can be
acquired for a suitable metric for energy efficiency.
The t-test and ANOVA are the two most common
tests for comparing the means of different samples. The
t-test is a pairwise test to compare the means of two sets
with the null hypothesis of equality of means between
them. This test is easy to conduct but can cause type 1
error (Zhou et al., 1997). Type 1 error occurs when a
true null hypothesis is rejected (Sheskin, 2004). In the
case of comparing operators performance, type 1 error
occurs when two operators have equal performance
metric but the test concludes that operators performance
are significantly different. As the t-test is based on
pairwise comparison, when there are more than two
operators for comparison, multiple pairwise tests are
necessary. In each run of the t-test at significant level of
a, there is (a6100)% chance of type 1 error. For nOp
operators, the probability of type 1 error is given by
equation (1). The chance of type I error increases by
increasing number of operators


nOp
Chance of type I error~1{1{a

(1)

The ANOVA test can replace t-test in cases where

there are more than two operators to reduce the chance

Abdi Oskouei and Awuah-Offei

2 Process for choosing the best statistical test

of type 1 error. ANOVA is a parametric analysis, which

tests the hypothesis of equality of means between two or
more sets. The null hypothesis is that the mean values of
the data sets are the same against the alternate
hypothesis that at least two sets have different means.
For example, ANOVA can help infer whether all
operators at a mine have essentially the same mean
energy efficiency (null hypothesis) or at least two of the
operators have different mean energy efficiencies (alternate hypothesis).
Each statistical test has specific assumptions and
violating these assumptions can lead into misapplication
of the test (Herberich et al., 2010; Ankara and Yerel,
2010). It is critical to choose a statistical test that is
compatible with the nature of the data set. Preliminary
data analysis can help to better understand the data and
check for the assumptions of the tests. The best
statistical test should be chosen based on the result of
preliminary data analysis. The importance of preliminary data analysis and checking the assumptions before
performing the test has been overlooked when comparing the performance of mining equipment (Patnayak
et al., 2007; Komljenovic et al., 2010).
In the case of comparing the means between groups
using ANOVA or t-test, preliminary data analysis
includes estimating summary statistics, testing for
normality, and testing for equality of variances.
Figure 2 shows the suggested approach in this work,
which can be used as a guideline to choose the optimal
statistical test that is compatible with the data.
Both ANOVA and t-test require three assumptions.
First, the observations should be independent. This
assumption seems reasonable as we assume that
performance of one operator does not affect the
performance of other operators. However, the mine
engineer should ensure this assumption is true through
good data collection practices and experimental design.
Second, the observations should follow a normal
distribution. Graphical methods and quantitative methods can be used to test for normality of the data. Graphs
such as histograms and quantilequantile (QQ) plots,
can be used to compare an empirical distribution and a
theoretical normal distribution. Quantitative methods
look at skewness and kurtosis of data and also the result
of statistical tests of normality (such as goodness-of-fit
tests) to check the normality of the data (Park, 2008).
The ShapiroWilk (SW) (Shapiro and Wilk, 1965),
KolmogorovSmirnov (KS), AndersonDarling (AD)

Evaluating energy efficiency of mining machines

(Anderson and Darling, 1952), and Cramervol Mises

(CM) (Anderson, 1961) tests are some of the common
tests that are used to test for normality of a data set. SW
test is the most powerful test; however, it is limited to
sample sizes greater than or equal to 7 and less than or
equal to 2000 (Shapiro et al., 1968; Stephens, 1974). For
data collected from digging equipment monitoring
systems, even for short periods of observation, the
sample sizes are likely to exceed the range of support of
the SW test. KS, AD, and CM tests are recommended
for larger (.2000 samples) data sets. These tests are
based on the empirical cumulative distribution (Park,
2008; Schlotzhauer, 2009). When the KS test is rejected
it can be concluded that the data do not follow the
normal distribution with the sample mean and sample
variance; however it can be normal at other values of the
mean and variance. AD and CM tests also share this
weakness (Stephens, 1974; Drezner et al., 2010). Given
the weakness of these statistical tests, it is helpful to
consider the results of both quantitative and graphical
methods when testing for the normality. It is probable
that the data violate the assumption of normality. One
approach to handle the violation of the normality
assumption is to transform the data (typically using a
natural log transformation).
The third assumption requires equal variances of
the samples. Several statistical tests, including F-test,
Bartletts test and Levenes test, examine the differences
in variation among two or more samples. The F-test and
the related Bartletts test are too sensitive to normality
of the data (Schultz, 1983). Levenes test (Levene, 1960;
Van Valen, 1978), which is an alternative to the F-test, is
robust even when the data are not normally distributed
(Levene, 1960; Van Valen, 1978). Hence, the authors
suggest the Levenes test to analyze the equality of
variances in this work.
Welch ANOVA and Welch t-test, in which the third
assumption (equality of variances) is relaxed (Welch,
1947), can be used to address the problem caused by
violating the third assumption. Welchs test is a
practical, simple and accurate test. It is based on
Students distribution with degree of freedom depending
on both sample size and sample variance. In some cases,
Welchs test is recommended as a replacement of t-test
even when the variances are equal (Rodgers and
Nicewander, 1988; Krishnamoorthy et al., 2007).
To reduce the chance of misusing statistical tests, nonparametric tests can be used alongside parametric tests.
Non-parametric tests have fewer assumptions compared
to parametric tests. However, they are less powerful in
detecting differences (Schlotzhauer, 2009). The Kruskal
Wallis test, which is a non-parametric equivalent test
for the ANOVA, can be used instead of ANOVA
(WilcoxonMannWhitney a replacement for the t-test)
(Cody, 2011). The null hypothesis of this test is that all
sets (more than two sets) have identical cumulative
distribution function and the alternative hypothesis is
that at least two of the sets differ only with respect to
location (median). In this test, the assumption of
normality is relaxed. When performed on log-transformed data the results may be invalid in the case of
extremely skewed data (McElduff et al., 2010).
To sum up, it is critical to check the assumptions of
statistical tests before using them. The proposed
approach (Fig. 3) presents a systematic means to study

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3 Algorithm of choosing the best statistical test

the effect of operators on energy efficiency. The t-test

and ANOVA are the two common tests for comparing
the means of two or more than two data sets,
respectively. Data should follow a normal distribution
for valid results of ANOVA and t-test. Quantitative and
graphical methods can be used to test for normality.
Non-parametric tests, such as KruskalWallis and
WilcoxonMannWhitney, can replace ANOVA and ttest when the data are not normal. Equal variance
between groups is another assumption of the ANOVA
and t-test. Welch ANOVA and Welch t-tests are not
sensitive to equality of variances and can be used in
place of ANOVA and t-test when the assumption of
homogeneity (equality of variances) is violated. Figure 3
describes the suggested algorithm of choosing the
statistical test compatible with the data set, for both
cases of two and more than two operators. The result of
valid statistical tests can be used to investigate the effect
of operator practice on the performance of digging
equipment.

Case study
Data collected from a Bucyrus-Erie 1570w dragline with
bucket capacity of 85 yd3 are used here to illustrate the
suggested method. The main duty of the dragline in this
mine is to remove the overburden above the coal
seam(s). During the 1-month data collection period,
the material type remained, essentially, constant as the
dragline was operating in one pit. During the period, 13
operators worked on this dragline. Five of these
operators, with sufficient working hours, were selected
for this analysis (Abdi Oskouei and Awuah-Offei, 2014).
Accuweigh (Tyler, TX, USA) monitoring system on this
dragline was modified (the programmable logic controllers were reprogrammed) to record energy consumption of drag, hoist, and swing motors. In this study,
dragline energy efficiency is introduced as an indicator
of an operators performance. Energy efficiency of
dragline can be determined using the following equation

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g~

P
Et

(2)

where g is the energy efficiency, P is the weight of

material moved by the dragline (payload), and Et is the
total energy consumed by drag, hoist, and swing motors
during the cycle.
The energy efficiency of the five operators under
review was calculated for each productive cycle using
equation (3). Table 2 shows the summary of operator
performance (after removing outliers) during the data
collection period
g(i)~

P(i)
P(i)
~
Et (i) Es (i)zEd (i)zEh (i)

(3)

where g(i) is the energy efficiency for cycle i; P(i) is the

payload for cycle i; Es(i) is the swing energy for cycle i;
Ed(i) is the drag energy for cycle i; and Eh(i) is the hoist
energy for cycle i.
Figure 4 shows the boxplots of the energy efficiency of
the five operators. Obviously, the data are highly
variable. As with the mean energy efficiency data
(Table 2), one can rank the operators in decreasing
order of median energy efficiency as E, A, C, D and B.
Although, the mean and median energy efficiencies vary
from operator to operator, it is difficult to conclude
from summary statistics and plots (e.g. Figure 4) alone
whether this variation is significant or not (i.e. because
of sampling). This requires further analysis, which is the
scope of this paper.

Normality
Preliminary data analysis includes testing for normality
and testing the equality of variance as described in the
methodology section. KS, CM, and AD tests were
carried out at significant level of 0?05 to examine the
normality of data. Table 3 shows the results of these
tests. The results of these tests show that the null
hypothesis in all these tests (data follow normal

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Evaluating energy efficiency of mining machines

4 Energy efciency of operators

distribution) is rejected and energy efficiency of none of

the operators follows the normal distribution (all pvalues are less than 0?005). Log transformation is
commonly used to reduce the skewness of the data
(Zhou et al., 1997). Even after log transformation, the
results (Table 4) of the statistical tests indicate that the
transformed data are not normal.
Given the weakness of these statistical tests, it is
important to also use graphical methods to gain a better
understanding of the nature of the data. Figure 5 shows
histograms of energy efficiency for the five operators. It
can be seen that the data have right skewness and nonnormal. Figure 5 shows that the transformed data are
closer to the normal distribution. QQ plots were also
used to study the effect of log transformation of the
data. These plots compare ordered values of a variable
with quantiles of a normal distribution. The closer the
data are to the normal distribution, the closer the points
will be to the linear pattern passing through the origin
with the unit origin (Johnson and Wichern, 2007).
Figure 6 displays these QQ plots of the original data
and the log-transformed data. The comparison between
the QQ plots and histograms indicates that log
transformation made the data more normal.

Equality of variance
The results of the statistical tests show that neither the
original data nor the log-transformed data follow
normal distribution. These statistical tests cannot always
be trusted. Graphical methods were utilised to confirm
the results of the statistical tests. Histograms and QQ

plots indicate that the assumption of log-transformed

data following normal distribution may be valid.
Levenes test was performed to examine the equality
of variances between the log-transformed data from the
different operators. A p-value of 0?0008 was estimated,
which indicates that, at a significance level of 0?05, the
null hypothesis of equal variances was rejected. The
result of the Levenes test showed that the third
assumption will be violated by this data set.
Performing the Levenes test on the original data also
indicated that the variances between energy efficiency of
operators are significantly different (p-value,0?0001).

Evaluating operator effects

This case study compared the energy efficiency of five
operators. Considering that t-tests can handle pairwise
comparisons, 10 runs would be needed to compare all
five operators. Therefore, the chance of committing type
1 error was 40% (equation (1)). It was concluded that the
results of the t-test cannot be trusted because of the high
risk of committing type 1 error. Also, the assumption of
homogeneity (equality of variances) between energy
efficiency of operators (original and log-transformed
data) is violated in this case. The final conclusion was
drawn based on the result of the Welch ANOVA and
KruskalWallis test. The Welch ANOVA is valid if one
assumes the log-transformed data to be normal and will
handle the fact that the variances are unequal. The nonparametric KruskalWallis test does not require the data
to be normal nor have equal variances. It is important to
note that these two tests, which are probably the most

Table 1 Examples of proxy use in mining energy efciency literature

Reference

Metric

Energy output (proxy)

Energy input (proxy)

Specific energy of disc cutter (kW h m23) Energy used by disc cutter (kW h) Volume of rock
excavated (m3)
Excavation power (kN cm s21)
Volume of rock excavated
Muro et al. (2002)
Specific cutting energy of disc
per second (cm3 s21)
cutter (kN cm cm23)
Dynamic energy (kJ) multiplied
Payload (kg)
Awuah-Offei et al. (2011) Energy per unit loading rate of
by digging time (s)
cable shovel (kJ s kg21)
Blading or ripping resistance in a Width of a wide blade
Iai and Gertsch (2013) Specific energy of ripper (J m23)
given extraction distance (J)
multiply by excavation
depth multiplied by total
excavation distance (m3)
Acaroglu et al. (2008)

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5 Histogram of energy efciency and log-transformed energy efciency

optimal in a lot of mining situations have never been

used in the mining literature to review the effect of
operators on energy efficiency or performance. The
systematic approach suggested in this work will lead
mine engineers to the most appropriate test and, hence,
reliable conclusions.
The results of the Welch ANOVA test at significance
level of 0?05 showed that energy efficiency is significantly
different between operators (p,0?0001). The Kruskal
Wallis test also confirmed the results of Welch ANOVA
test and indicated that energy efficiency of operators is

significantly different between operators (Table 5). The

mine can, therefore, conclude with confidence that
operator practices affect energy efficiency. The reasons
for this are explored elsewhere (Abdi Oskouei, 2013).
However, the causes of such effects have been well
documented in the literature (see Knights et al., 2013 for
example).
This example illustrates many of the challenges and
pit falls in analysing the effect of operators on energy
efficiency of mining equipment. The data are highly
variable (coefficient of variation more than 25%) and

Table 2 Summary of operators performance during the data collection after removing outliers
Opr No. of cycles Time/h Material weight/t Energy consumption/kW h Production/t h21 Energy efficiency/t kW21 h21
A
B
C
D
E

3897
3611
3350
3058
2211

56.91
54.62
49.60
45.64
32.77

496
450
427
383
277

177
217
226
552
554

44
43
39
36
23

850
894
827
879
395

8719
8243
8613
8404
8469

11.063
10.257
10.727
10.400
11.864

Table 3 Result of statistical test on energy efciency of operators

Opr A

KS
CM
AD

Opr B

Opr C

Opr D

Opr E

Statistic

p-Value

Statistic

p-Value

Statistic

p-Value

Statistic

p-Value

Statistic

p-Value

0.07166
6.02058
35.9658

,0.010
,0.005
,0.005

0.06621
6.34709
37.9851

,0.010
,0.005
,0.005

0.07527
7.68707
45.2889

,0.010
,0.005
,0.005

0.07718
7.18008
45.5553

,0.010
,0.005
,0.005

0.0426
1.2886
7.7490

,0.010
,0.005
,0.005

KS: KolmogorovSmirnov; CM: Cramervol Mises; AD: AndersonDarling.

Table 4 Result of statistical test on transformed energy efciency of operators
Opr A

KS
CM
AD

Opr B

Opr C

Opr D

Statistic

p-Value

Statistic

p-Value

Statistic

p-Value

Statistic

p-Value

Statistic

p-Value

0.04082
1.97118
11.7729

,0.010
,0.005
,0.005

0.02514
0.75778
4.53897

,0.010
,0.005
,0.005

0.03724
1.56015
9.07657

,0.010
,0.005
,0.005

0.02766
0.79087
5.66382

,0.010
,0.005
,0.005

0.03113
0.66522
5.03061

,0.010
,0.005
,0.005

KS: KolmogorovSmirnov; CM: Cramervol Mises; AD: AndersonDarling.

Opr E

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6 Quantilequantile (QQ) plot of energy efciency and log-transformed energy efciency

skewed (non-normal), even after removing outliers. A

simple t-test will have a significant (40%) risk of type 1
error. This risk will increase to 98% (equation (1)), if all
13 operators at the mine were included in the analysis. In
any case, the use of a t-test cannot be justified in this
case because the data violate the assumption of equal
variances. The data are not normal but approaches
normal upon log transformation, although the evidence
is inconclusive. Depending on whether one assumes
normality of the transformed data or not, the Welch
ANOVA and KruskalWallis tests, respectively, are
optimal based on the process presented in Fig. 3. Both
tests result in the same inference: the mean energy
efficiency differs among operators (they have an effect
on energy efficiency).

Conclusion
This research proposes a two stage process to evaluate the
effect of operators on performance of digging equipment
in mines. The first stage involves evaluating the validity of
three basic assumptions independence, normality, and
equality of variances. It is assumed that performance of
one operator is independent of the others. Graphical and
quantitative tests are suggested for testing the normality
of data. Levenes test is suggested for analysing equality
of variances due to low sensitivity to the normality of the
data set. The second stage of the suggested process
involves tests for equality of means. Depending on the
number of pairs of operators to be compared, this work
recommends two different processes for determining the
appropriate tests. Both parametric and non-parametric
tests are considered, based on the stage one analysis (test
for independence, normality, and equality of variances).
The goal is to draw the right inference about the effect of
operators on energy efficiency, given the data properties
and to reduce type 1 errors.

The proposed method is illustrated with a case study

of a dragline operation. In the case study, 1-months
data were collected for 13 operated, with five operating
long enough to be included in the analysis. Based on the
mean and median of the energy efficiencies of productive
cycles, the operators can be ranked as follows: E, A, C,
D and B with operator E being the most energy efficient.
However, to establish with confidence whether the
variation in energy efficiencies is independent of
sampling randomness, the proposed approach was
applied to these operators. Preliminary data analysis
shows that the data were non-normal. The analysis was
inconclusive with respect to whether log transformation
makes the data normal or not. The results of analysis,
based on the proposed approach, suggest that the
variances of energy efficiencies for the five operators
are not equal. The Welch ANOVA and KruskalWallis
tests were found to be optimal depending on whether
one concludes that the log-transformed data are normal
or not. Both tests confirm, in this case, that the means of
the energy efficiencies are significantly (p,0?0001)
different. The authors conclude then that, at this mine,
the energy efficiency of dragline operations differs from
operator to operator. Mine engineers and management
can, therefore, proceed with continuing operator training efforts to improve energy efficiency and reduce
energy consumption.

Acknowledgement
The authors are grateful for the financial support provided
by the Energy Research & Development Center at
Missouri University of Science and Technology. They
are also grateful for the support of Arch Coal, Inc. (St.
Louis, MO, USA) and Drive & Controls Services, Inc.
(Tyler, TX, USA) who helped in the data acquisition.
Finally, they are grateful for the reviewers whose

Table 5 Result of Welch ANOVA and KruskalWallis test

Test

Degree of freedom

Statistics

p-Value

Welch ANOVA
KruskalWallis test

4
4

F value 154.63
x2 614.38

,0.0001
,0.0001

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Abdi Oskouei and Awuah-Offei

Evaluating energy efficiency of mining machines

comments improved the quality of this paper by making it

more relevant to industry.

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