Proven Results

Problem: Heavy manufacturing multinational with history of serious incidents involving statutory plant.

Solution: Compliance process audited and redesigned. The resulting streamlined process greatly improved the site's compliance to its statutory obligations. The improved process also required fewer resources to operate.

Problem: Heavy minerals processing plant with bottleneck process not achieving target production levels

Solution: Maintenance systems audited and redesigned. Maintenance planning was improved and better use was made of the sites CMMS. Alignment between production and maintenance was greatly increased.

Unplanned downtime reduced by 78%, expenditure on breakdowns reduced by 95%, overall production increased by 17%.

Problem: A large mining concern was continuing to suffer considerable production losses due to poor equipment reliability. The performance of the site's maintenance department was identified as being generally inadequate, although it had been difficult for the management team to identify where major improvement opportunities existed and in which priority opportunities should be addressed.

Solution: CCI Pope's Asset Management Services group performed a full asset management capability assessment of the site. This assessment highlighted a number of significant deficiencies and identified various opportunities for improvement. To address the issues that were identified in the capability assessment, CCI Pope Asset Management Services developed a detailed prioritised action plan, which the site immediate began to implement.

Problem: A crucial bottleneck process in a smelting operation was performing poorly. Equipment reliability and production quality problems were severely impacting downstream processes. These problems led ultimately to considerable production losses and to significant end-product quality issues. Furthermore, increased amounts of scrap material were produced, which created serious health, safety and environmental concerns.

Solution: A production downtime reporting system was implemented to allow the causes of production stoppages to be identified and prioritised. Once these issues were identified and prioritised, RCA sessions were held with operators and maintainers to determine how best to address the root causes of plant stoppages and to prevent their recurrence. A program was also implemented to improve the co-operation between plant operators and maintenance personnel. As part of this 'equipment care program', plant operators were educated in ways to better care for the equipment they 'owned' and operated.

In addition to implementing programs to improve plant reliability and reduce production stoppages, efforts were made to improve production performance by improving process control methods. The production process was mapped and key control parameters were identified. Control charts were developed for these parameters, which were used by the operators to control the production process according to the rules of statistical process control. As stoppages were reduced and production control was improved plant stability and product quality significantly increased.

Problem: The condition of critical plant at a major mineral exporter uncertain. The processes applied to the management of equipment integrity were undefined and little understood.

Solution: Existing integrity management processes were mapped and suitable sources of condition assessment information were identified and collated into a current risk-based condition summary. An improved method of managing machine integrity was designed based on the site's existing information systems. This improved system allowed a risk-based summary of current plant condition to be automatically produced as required. High risks were easily identified and rectification work required was able to be more easily and more effectively prioritised.

Problem: A steel manufacturing plant was operating in a purely reactive environment. Planning and scheduling was limited to shutdowns only and little or no preventative maintenance work was being done. Due to this, no useful maintenance history was being recorded.

Solution: A CMMS package was selected, purchased and configured. Maintenance work management processes were developed and implemented. Maintenance staff were trained and mentored in the business processes enabled by the maintenance software. Following on from this a maintenance spares improvement project was undertaken to set up a new physical store and develop, implement and train stores management procedures to gain control of spare parts. This work contributed to; a reduction in maintenance delays of some 450 min/mth, equipment reliability increasing by 5%, a reduction in maintenance costs of 20% and stock-take variance was reduced to $0.