Achieving a 10% mine throughput increase without capital investment in a 4 month period

The challenge: Our client had ambitious plans to increase throughput volume by 10% within a 4 month period to allow budgets to be achieved with the financial year. Volume is a function of the interplay of a multi-node ('siloed') production system and its associated inventories, each node of which on the face of it at least, had more than enough "demonstrated" capacity to meet these plans. Actual volume being achieved at the end point of the system was well below demonstrated capacity and the system operated with an extraordinarily high standard deviation. The key issue in terms of making or exceeding plan was "how to substantially reduce the variability of the system with inventories between nodes matched to nodal variability".

The approach: Following a detailed process definition phase, during which the team analysed and quantified the Root Causes of the reduced throughput and extreme variation, the project drew up a new business model for the operations. This business model was then implemented with planning processes and operational meetings with clearly defined measures and accountabilities changed to reflect the new model.
Following the bedding-in of the process changes, the client was confident enough to allow the organisation structure to be changed to align with the new process responsibilities.

The outcome:

10% Throughput increase in 4 months

15% Reduction in Variance

Run-rates improved by 10% measured over a six month period. Our consulting team focused on balancing the flow of ore through the nodes with the intent of getting more out with less input effort.   This reduced input effort manifested itself as windows of time allowing 'opportunistic' maintenance to be performed, which, through fine-tuning, allowed for addition reliability of the major systems. Average throughput increased and daily process variation reduced considerably.