MAINTENANCE WORK ORDER MANAGEMENT IMPROVEMENT

CLIENT

Gold Processing Plant.

OBJECTIVE

Xenco was engaged to investigate the cause of unreliability and address the reactive maintenance environment within a Gold CIP and Leaching operation and maintenance function.

THE CHALLENGES

The Xenco team encountered significant challenges while striving to enhance operational reliability and meet production targets by ensuring mill availability.

These critical issues took centre stage as the team devised and executed an improvement plan to address them head-on.

• Reactive workplace culture
• Volume of unscheduled maintenance events
• Interdepartmental conflict related to maintenance scheduling
• No timely opportunity to review upcoming work
• Designed maintenance processes remained unimplemented
• Key roles were not clearly defined, impacting performance

OUR APPROACH

Xenco initiated a comprehensive diagnostic process, which commenced with remote data analysis and was followed by an on-site visit. The outcome of this analysis led to the development and implementation of a maintenance improvement plan aimed at enhancing the reliability and availability of the plant.

Diagnostic Activity

• Remote analysis of maintenance and production data with supporting team member interviews.
• On-site visit to gain deeper insight and qualitative context into the nature of the problems.

Improvement Plan

The initial phase aimed to mitigate reactive behaviour by establishing disciplined work management processes and providing clarity and structure to:

• Daily prestart meetings
• Visual performance centres
• Roles and responsibilities
• Work management processes
• Shutdown management processes

OUR RESULTS

The maintenance improvement plan resulted in substantial benefits across the mine’s processing operations. Through actions and guidance, the plan effectively addressed reactive tendencies within departments by clarifying roles and facilitating effective planning and scheduling processes, while together achieving improved discipline, enhanced reliability and operational efficiency.

Within the first four months of Xenco’s involvement, the following improvements occurred.

• Gold production achieved the highest monthly output over the past 5 years.
• Significant cost reduction in unscheduled work spend from 44% to 16%.
• Daily scheduling had been introduced resulting in schedule compliance increasing to 88%.
• Break in work reduced from 34% to 20% thanks to more efficient processes and communication with emergency work and subsequent work orders.
• Increased predictability and improved interactions with Supply enabled the revival of automatic stock reordering.
• Improved overall work coordination which reduced downtime and raised equipment availability for maintenance activity.