Abstract

This is not a tecnically dense presentation. It gives a practical approach to reliability improvement where there was virtually nothing to go on but doing nothing was not an option.

An underground precious metals mine in West Africa had engaged a third party to complete site review to improve operations. Underground mobile maintenance was felt to be a key contributer to missed targets but there was no data to show that or any data to use as a baseline to measure Maintenance Performance. Fleet maintenance was almost totally reactive, with only a handful of OEM recomended PMs being executed and no analysis of timeliness or quality of work. Basic formal maintenance systems were installed for planning and scheduling but it would be a long time before useful data would be accumulated to allow for a formal approach to reliability improvement.

Mine leadership needed action now, not at some undetermined future date, so a methodology was trialed using anecdotal information from a group of operators and maintenance technicians and their supervisors. Priority was determined by Mine Operations and the group "drilled down" to identify percieved bad actors along with their failure modes. Mitigating actions were brainstormed for the failure modes and then prioritized based on criteria developed with the participants.

The improvement plan consisted of implementing three prioritized actions which included one for Operations and two for Maintenance. Once complete, the next three were chosen.

A side benefit from this exercise was employee engagement. The country is a monarchy and owns the mining company. The culture was hierarchical. They would not have thought to draw on the knowledge of technicians and operators without a nudge from outside the paradigm. All involved participated actively in the process including a religious leader who was present for the entire activity. It was obvious that the participants and the leaders enjoyed the process and there were volunteers to lead the implementation of the selected mitigating actions.

The company leadership liked the approach so much that it was later featured in a company wide (ten minesites) BI workshop hosted by the President.