Excavator fleet performance turnaround

For a large South African iron ore mine

Poor performance of heavy mobile mining equipment limits site production volumes, and subsequently, business revenue.

The causes of poor asset performance are often complex. Separate but typically interdependent issues create a vicious cycle that sites struggle to turn around.

02

Leadership focus shifts to stopping
availability loss and breakdowns

03

Cost rise and leaders face pressure to
reduce costs

04

Decision to push out preventive
maintenance to meet availability targets

Core Asset Co. specialises in breaking this cycle.

CHALLENGE

Fleet performance issues were constraining site production at a well-known iron ore mine in South Africa*. Site leaders found themselves under significant pressure to come up with solutions and deliver quickly.

Busy managing their underperforming mining operation, the client’s team didn’t have the time, resources or know-how to turn this issue around.

*Anonymised to protect the client’s business 

Partnering with Core Asset Co., the client’s goal was to break this performance cycle and sustainably increase their electric shovel and hydraulic excavator availability over 12 months.

SOLUTION

Determine the problems and their root causes

Core Asset Co.’s data analytics team began by taking a performance baseline – including data validation and in-field performance loss assessment – to determine current vs. potential performance.

The team …

1. identified areas of improvement,
2. evaluated the impact of each area on asset availability and site productivity, and
3. developed a prioritised list of improvement opportunities by business value.

Core Asset Co. facilitated leadership workshops where site leaders shared their substantial on-the-ground knowledge. When combined with
insights from the analytics team, this allowed Core Asset Co. to determine underlying reasons for the fleet’s underperformance.

Find that solutions that fit best

The client’s problems were complex, necessitating a multi-faceted solution. Collaborating with the site leadership team, Core Asset Co. developed an improvement program, with detailed plans for each major workstream.

The group reviewed any concerns and ‘pet projects’ against baseline data and conducted sensitivity analyses. Further live testing of project impact sensitivity on the overall business value case helped align the team on what mattered most.

Solutions considered the site’s unique context, including:

The client’s team owned and led each workstream, with the onsite Core Asset Co. team providing governance, training and on-the-job coaching.

Implement changes

Over a period of 12 months, the Core Asset Co. team closely supported the site-led performance turnaround program and performed three key roles:

1. Provide governance and assurance for business executives
2. Coach site leaders
3. Offer additional project team capacity to support front-line personnel

Noteworthy actions included:

1. Develop a holistic fleet strategy for the site HME, simplifying the fleet to reduce complexity for the maintenance team
   1. Park-up of two under-utilised 800-tonne excavators
   2. Modification to mine plan machine allocation pathways to improve stockpile loading rates and reduce excavator tramming
      time and cost
   3. Evaluation of contract options to reduce the strain on existing maintenance resources
2. Roll out a targeted shovel and excavator reliability improvement program
   1. Organisational capability and structure
   2. Maintenance strategy and tactics review and refinement
   3. Shutdown optimisation, standard planning template and execution structure
   4. Component age and health baseline
   5. Risk management framework to reduce component failure risks and breakdown failure cost
   6. Planning priority and process refinement, and reduction in high priority component backlog
   7. Component vendor selection and rebuild quality
3. Provide training, processes, systems and support for the team to sustain improvements long-term.

THE OUTCOME

Within 12 months, Core Asset Co. was able to turn around performance of critical assets that directly constrained the mine’s productivity. Because of this, the client saw significant improvements in both fleet uptime and mine production.