Applicability of a surface miner (SM) must be based on a careful assessment of intact rock and rock mass properties. A detailed literature review was made to identify different parameters influencing the performance of various types of cutting machines deployed in different parts of the world. The critical parameters influencing the production, diesel consumption and pick consumption of SM in Indian coal and limestone mines, were identified through artificial neural network (ANN) technique and

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... creened by correlation coefficient analysis. Parameters that were common in both ANN and correlation analysis were grouped under critical category and others in semicritical category.