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Context / Scope of project
Our client was a multi-stage, open cast coal mine consisting of 4 pits spread across 30km2, mining 3 coal seams to a depth of 80 meters. The mine had consistently failed to achieve its annual production budget over the last 5 years and the management team could not provide an acceptable explanation to the shareholders. During the last year production output became erratic and the shareholders started to question the commercial viability of the operation. The site was characterised by poor operating discipline and although management embarked on ‘the year of accountability’ the ‘wiring’ to achieve this was lacking. The brief to PIP was to work with the management team to implement the ‘wiring’ to entrench a culture of accountability as well as identify and address the root causes for the below-budget and erratic production without compromising safety. Safe production was complicated by a) spontaneous combustion (one of the seams was old underground board and pillar workings) with its related fire hazards and poor visibility from the ever present smoke; b) poor visibility during the 3 winter months caused by heavy mist and c) slippery driving conditions during the summer wet season (4 months).
Client achieved:
- Preventative safety actions on target for the first time since systems implemented
- 120 Visible Felt Leadership sessions (VFLs) per month by management team
- 360 Planned Task Observations (PTOs) per month by frontline supervisors
- 5% increase in truck fill factor
- 30% reduction in truck hours lost to ‘no driver’
- 93% reduction in truck hours lost with no description
- 10% improvement in Run of Mine production
- 98% of YTD budget achieved, making budget for the first time in 5 years
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What we did:
- Developed Value Driver Trees and identified the following as the main reasons for poor and erratic production:
- haul truck performance
- insufficient mining inventory, overburden and interburden
- Implemented an Ideas Pipeline focused on improving haul truck performance:
- Increased direct operating hours
- Reduced hours lost to ‘no driver’
- Reduced hours lost during shift change
- Reduced hours lost to handover between mining and engineering after breakdowns or maintenance
- Increased fill factor of trucks
- Implemented the correct ‘wiring’ to establish and entrench 2 new operating strategies
- Compliance to plan including improving the quality and integrity of the plans produced by the planning department as well as weekly variance analysis to identify the root causes of non-compliance
- Restoring and maintaining minimum inventory levels for efficient operation (overburden, interburden, drilled and blasted material)
- Improved the ‘wiring’ around labour management to improve ‘drivers on seats’
- Leave and retirement planning
- Efficiency and effectiveness of recruitment
- Operator licensing (to operate equipment)
- Proactive management of absenteeism
- Performance contracts and bonus schemes
- Implemented a Management Operating System (MOS) including coaching of frontline managers and supervisors in Short Interval Control (SIC) to drive rapid results in:
- Preventative safety actions
- Planned Task Observations
- Visible Felt Leadership sessions
- Compliance to plan on a per shift basis
- Crew and equipment line-up at the start of and during the shift (drivers on seats)
- Accurate equipment downtime recording and reporting
- Implemented daily and weekly Results-Action-Reviews (RARs) to ensure:
- alignment alignment from the General Manager all the way down to operator level around operating and improvement priorities
- establish and entrench a culture of accountability.
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