Mine Processing Plant Capacity Increase
Streamlining weekly crusher shutdown increases mill production
- 2 minutes read
Our client is one of the world’s largest gold mining firms headquartered in Johannesburg, South Africa, listed on the Johannesburg Stock Exchange (JSE) and the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE). The company owns and operates mines in Australia, Chile, Ghana, Peru, and South Africa, and it has a JV project in Canada.
The Australian executive team had set a strategy to improve operational performance across the four assets under their control to ensure they could meet the financial year budgets. ORBIZ was asked to support the most extensive operation, consisting of three underground and four open-pit operations, as it was under the most pressure.
54%
$29M
292kt
The approach
Through workshops to assess the current departmental plans and site objectives, the project team determined which improvement activities were critical to ensuring the site could meet the fiscal year budgets.
The processing department identified that a mill throughput increase was a crucial requirement. Through further discussions and observations, the project team determined that an opportunity existed to increase the overall feed to the mill by reducing the duration of the weekly crusher shutdown.
An investigation into the shutdown duration discovered that the process was seen as untouchable, as it was required to enable the engineering department to perform regular inspections related to the cause of previous major mechanical failures.
The project team used a cross-functional engagement session to gain agreement on challenging the timeframe for completing the inspection program without reducing the examination content or frequency.
The solutions
The project team analysed the inspection process using the Quick Change-Over methodology with the support of the production crews. This activity identified several opportunities for improvement.
The improvements were implemented and formalised into standard procedures, resulting in a consistent inspection process that all crews could perform at a significantly reduced time.
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