How The Shelly Company transformed its mine planning, inventory management

The Shelly Company is now using Kespry‘s drone-based aerial intelligence for mine planning and inventory management.

The Shelly Company, which is based in Ohio and has more than 90 locations and 1,600 employees, is using the Kespry platform to measure contours to ensure it creates accurate mine plans. Kespry’s intelligence also allows The Shelly Company to determine accurate stripping calculations while ensuring its vendors plan for and deliver exact quotes and volumes.

“Using Kespry helps us make informed decisions and work closely with contractors to compare stripping quantities,” says Chris Pike, performance manager at The Shelly Company. “This ensures we are charged the correct amount. Kespry also gives us more control and increases efficiency. Once our drone lands from a 20- to 30-minute flight, the flight data is immediately uploaded to the Kespry cloud for processing.”

The process

Depending on the size of the data collected, the process can take just a few hours, Pike says, allowing The Shelly Company to provide a quick turnaround of the data to share with stakeholders.

“They usually want this information immediately, and it’s great to be able to provide that information to them quickly,” Pike says. “With Kespry, we’re able to sit in front of our stakeholders, run through the data, show them how the calculations were done and identify any possible issues. Kespry has improved the comfort level and trust in the data.”

In addition, The Shelly Company uses Kespry to perform before-and-after stripping surveys to validate the amounts of material moved. Inventory management involving updated product volume and unit weights is another activity The Shelly Company performs with its vendor partner.

“Kespry has made The Shelly Company’s mine planning and inventory management activities more transparent and productive than ever,” says George Mathew, CEO at Kespry. “With Kespry, The Shelly Company can focus and deliver on its customers’ needs and expectations with the knowledge that its vendors are working in lockstep and providing the materials they need when they need them.”

But the benefits don’t end there. The Shelly Company also selected Kespry because of its ease of use, customer service and consultative approach to evolving its platform.

“We’ve been asked on numerous occasions by the Kespry team to be involved with product development, such as incorporating mine planning into its platform,” Pike says. “This, in my opinion, is part of the partnership and their commitment to have our input.”

Perhaps most important is the added safety The Shelly Company gains.

“Kespry has definitely improved safety,” Pike says. “It’s reduced the need to go near highways and crests, especially for mine planning purposes. It will eventually assist with our ongoing efforts to improve drilling and blasting safety by providing the ability to use drones to perform 3D face profiling.”

Information for this article courtesy of Kespry.