US MINING COMPANY SEES 9% PRODUCTION INCREASE IN FIRST YEAR WITH CARE RELIABILITY SERVICES
Our client – a large American open pit mining company operates in a highly competitive, cost-sensitive market subjected to fluctuations in commodity pricing. The company was experiencing annual production shortfalls year after year.
PHASE 1 – THE MILL
Prior to retaining Fluid Life, our client was experiencing frequent and lengthy periods of operational downtime due to improper and inconsistent maintenance practices. This led to production shortfalls of approx. 25% of annual capacity. They were performing little to no condition based maintenance in response to results from available predictive technologies. Work orders that were being submitted were not prioritized effectively resulting in a very long average time to completion.
SOLUTION
The company partnered with Fluid Life to collaborate on the issue. Fluid Life’s Reliability Specialists were able to determine the root cause of their mill outages and recommend a solution. Once implemented, their reliability increased and production gains in the first year equalled 9% with an additional 4% in year two.
PHASE 2 – THE MOBILE ASSETS
Once the main problem in the mill was solved our reliability specialists focused on the mobile fleet. With the mill no longer causing a production bottleneck,
the reliability of the mobile assets came into question. Unplanned component failures had put the maintenance team in firefighting mode and the client now struggled to get enough ore to the mill.
SOLUTION
In partnership with the client, through the CARE Service, our team was able to leverage available predictive technologies to:
- Better assess equipment condition
- Recommend targeted maintenance actions
- Prioritize the predictive maintenance workload
- Triple the number of complete condition based maintenance work orders;
- While reducing the average time to complete those work orders by two thirds
The success of this initiative resulted in a documented component repair and replacement savings of $12.9 million in one year
PHASE 3 – CONTINUOUS IMPROVEMENT PROJECTS
Under the watchful guidance of Fluid Life’s CARE Service, our client was also able to successfully extend the hydraulic oil life in their largest fleet of haul trucks. This resulted not only in lubricant annual cost savings of $271,000 per year and also helped to reduce the mines environmental footprint.
SUMMARY
- Increased production by 13% in two years
- Saved $12.9 million in component repair and replacement costs
- Reduced environmental footprint by reducing lubricant consumption, saving $271,000 in the process