Improving Reliability & Maintenance at Australian Coal Mine

INDUSTRY:

Coal Mine in New South Wales, Australia

SNAPSHOT:

An underground, Australian coal mine set out to improve its unsteady production output while keeping fixed cost unchanged.

IDCON started the engagement by completing the Current Best Practices (CBP) audit for the mine. They scored a 30 versus a best in class score of 75. The reliability of the Mine’s Continuous Miners (CM) were the main bottlenecks for the mine. The extraction CM’s had an average of 88 minutes of downtime/ shift, while the development CM’s had an average of 82 minutes per shift of downtime.

Starting State:

• Downtime was 88 Minutes/ shift for Extraction CM’s and 82 minutes/ shift for Development CM’s
• Production schedule and maintenance schedule were not coordinated, which caused machines to be down even though no work was done on the machines.
• The mine had a lot of PM’s defined in the documentation system, but they were seldom completed to 100%.
• There were repetitive issues with Shear Shafts on the Continuous Miners. The average life was 1.5 days across all CM’s. This cause about 15 minutes of downtime each time the shaft broke.
• The mine did not have a dedicated maintenance planning function.
• There were no part staging for maintenance jobs
• A lubrication assessment had been completed, but few recommendations implemented yet.

 

Achieved after 1 Year

• In a 12-month period, including the initial CBP work, the average downtime was reduced from 82 minutes/ shift to 16 minutes/ shift for the Development CM’s and from 88 minutes/ shift to 35 minutes/ shift on the Extraction CM’s. By annualizing the production increase, each minute/shift is worth AUS$330,000/ year for extraction andAUS$260,000/year for Development. The total increase in reliability that in turn provided an increased production output was worth AUS$34.9 Million/ year.
• Most work orders were planned before handed to the crafts
• PM Compliance reached close to 100%

WHAT WAS DONE:

Overview:

• We performed a Current Best Practice (CBP) assessment to educate and help the organization visualize the gaps they currently had in reliability.
• We jointly worked out a detailed implementation plan.
• We initially attacked the high frequency problems with shear shafts and started to work on improved preventive maintenance and cleaning. This involved operations and maintenance.
• The mine later assigned planner positions and started to work according to IDCON’s basic planning and scheduling and materials management principles.

Initial Root Cause Boost

• The root cause problem elimination study of shear shafts helped the client eliminate
  problems with shear shafts, the Mean Time Between Failures on Shear Shafts went from1.5 days to several months after the suggested improvements were made.

Preventive Maintenance/ Essential Care and Condition Monitoring (PM/ECCM)

• All operators and maintenance personnel was trained in Preventive Maintenance/Essential Care and Condition Monitoring.
• The Preventive Maintenance (PM) for the CM was changed. Instead of executing maintenance for a whole panel at the time, it was decided that we schedule PM’s according to equipment need. Each machine was scheduled for a 4 hr slot on a regular interval.
• The improved schedule together with new skills in PM/ECCM and the help of operations cleaning and inspecting the equipment improved the reliability of the machines.
• Standards for how to PM each machine was documented by the team using pictures.
• All PM’s were reviewed and PM’s were removed and added depending on current state.

Planning and Scheduling

• A best practice process workflow was developed for P&S routine work.
• Planning and scheduling practices training was provided to all planners, operating and maintenance supervisors.
• A backlog of work was established and maintained
• Planners estimated work on a daily basis and assigned work according to manpower available.
• A parts staging area was arranged to stage parts for each work order before the day started.
• We jointly defined roles & responsibilities.
• Established KPIs. The main focus was % (e.g. weekly schedule break-in rate, PM compliance) for critical processes and initiated KPI tracking and review processes for each.
• Started planning sessions and scheduling meetings for all groups with standard agendas.
• Developed a structured, audited sustainability plan to ensure results persisted – included a sustainability scorecard for client to conduct monthly “self-checks”.