In the wave of intelligent and green transformation of the global mining industry, there is such a young technical pioneer: He has been on the frontline of scientific research for more than 10 years. With innovative achievements that fill gaps one after another, and hard-core responsibility to overcome difficulties time and time again, he has injected strong impetus into the high-quality development of my country’s intelligent mining equipment industry.
He is Yang Zhe, the technical director of the Mining Institute of Taiyuan Heavy Industry Technology Center and a senior engineer. With his excellent technical ability and outstanding work performance, he was recently awarded the “Taiyuan City Model Worker”.
Since joining the workforce in 2012, Yang Zhe has been engaged in the design of mining electric shovels for a long time, serving as the chief designer of 10 cubic meter and 12 cubic meter series products. He has completed the design and production services of more than 50 electric shovels. The products have been exported to India, Peru, Liberia and other countries, becoming core equipment and benchmarks in the field of open-pit mining at home and abroad.
The first domestic plateau-type 45-cubic-meter electric shovel equipment he completed under his leadership has been operating stably in a mining area on the Tibetan Plateau at an altitude of 5,500 meters for nearly 10 years due to its strong adaptability and stability.
He fully implements the “user first” R&D concept, conducts in-depth research on the deficiencies in product use at the mine site, collects user suggestions, and continuously optimizes the design.
In response to user feedback on issues such as the small space and poor operating experience of the 12 cubic meter electric shovel cab, he immediately optimized the design plan, re-planned the layout, upgraded the configuration, and adopted a new integrated linkage platform to make the operation safer, more efficient, and more user-friendly.
At the same time, he attaches great importance to the standardized design of products and proactively optimizes the design of 10 cubic meter buckets and other parts, realizing the common use of more than 30 kinds of parts such as bucket lips, lifting beams, buffers, sheaths, bucket opening levers, etc., thereby reducing production organization costs and user spare parts storage costs from the source.
After years of technological accumulation, Yang Zhe has obtained more than 10 core invention patents in the field of mining electric shovels. The “Key Technologies and Applications of Design and Control of Ten-Million-ton Open-pit Mining Excavators” developed by his team won the first prize for the Science and Technology Progress Award in the Machinery Industry.
In 2021, the company will lay out a “package” solution for open-pit mines and begin to develop large-scale mining dump trucks.
At the critical moment, Yang Zhe stepped forward and took the initiative to shoulder the important task of developing 220t mining dump trucks.
As the chief designer, he led the technical team to work on the front line for 15 consecutive months, comprehensively controlling all aspects of design, production, assembly, and debugging, solving technical bottlenecks and production problems one by one, successfully completing the no-load operation test in the factory, and verifying the stability and reliability of the basic performance of the vehicle.
In the end, the first prototype truck successfully completed the no-load operation on the road in the factory, and various performance indicators reached the industry’s advanced level, filling the gap in the company’s mining dump truck products in one fell swoop.
The world’s first permanent magnet direct-drive WK-55 electric shovel developed by the company broke through the limitations of traditional asynchronous motors with low transmission efficiency and high energy consumption. In 2025, Yang Zhe once again took the lead and led the technical support team to be stationed in the mine for more than 180 days, on call 24 hours a day, monitoring more than 100 key operating parameters in real time, and successfully overcame many technical problems such as motor control.
After continuous optimization, the world’s first permanent magnet direct-drive electric shovel has achieved stable operation, with a failure rate far lower than that of traditional electric shovels. A single piece of equipment can save 800,000 kilowatt-hours of electricity per year, significantly reducing mine operating costs.
Based on the forefront of the industry, innovation never stops.
Yang Zhe has always focused on the track of intelligent mining equipment, deeply engaged in core equipment technological innovation and intelligent mining technology research, and led industrial transformation and upgrading with continuous technological breakthroughs.
As a technical backbone, he has participated in two national key R&D programs: “Development and Demonstration Application of Super Large Shovel Robots for Open-pit Mining” and “Key Technologies for Sensor-Embedded Integrated Intelligent Bearings”, as well as the Shanxi Provincial Key R&D Program “Key Technology Research and Application Demonstration of Unmanned Wide-body Vehicles for Open-pit Mining”.
In the field of intelligent operation and maintenance technology, he led the team to complete the construction of the digital twin model in 6 months, and developed the most complete electric shovel health management platform in China, which can accurately predict 15 types of equipment core faults.
What’s even more exciting is that the new generation of intelligent remote control system it participated in the development of has a control delay of no more than 140 milliseconds.
With the support of naked-eye 3D stereoscopic vision technology, drivers can remotely control electric shovel equipment while sitting in the office, reducing the number of people on the mine working surface, significantly reducing safety risks, and greatly improving work quality.
In order to overcome the problem of complex environmental perception in open-pit mines, he led the team to go deep into the front lines of three different types of mines and used multi-sensor fusion technologies such as lidar and high-definition cameras to achieve 360-degree accurate perception of the operating environment.
From design and development to mining front lines, from traditional equipment to intelligent cutting-edge, R&D personnel in the field of mining equipment in my country are using hard work and dedication to interpret the profound connotation of the craftsmanship spirit in the new era.
On the grand journey of high-quality development of the global mining industry, these “light chasers” in the technical field are leading the team to move forward towards the higher goal of unmanned, intelligent, and green, and are also delivering more and more Chinese mining equipment products with excellent performance and outstanding cost performance to the global mining market.
