Increasing Haul Truck Availability
Service standardisation delivers a significant uplift in tonnes hauled
- 4 minutes read
Our client is a leading global iron ore producer, with its primary operations in the Pilbara region of Western Australia, which include a vast network of mines, railways, and port facilities.
The site leadership team at one of the client’s twelve mine sites in the Pilbara had identified that haul truck availability was constraining the site’s ability to meet production targets due to maintenance downtime.
Periodic maintenance services routinely overran, and the leadership team recognised that achieving target service times was the first step in improving truck availability and ultimately achieving challenging production targets without expanding the fleet.
ORBIZ were engaged to work with site maintenance planners and service technicians to reduce turnaround times (TAT) for the 500-hour service of large haul trucks.
48%
11.5 Hours
1M Tonnes
$1.4M
APPROACH
The planned TAT of 12 hours was rarely achieved, and the average duration of a standard 500-hour service was 23.5 hours.
A series of process observations and stakeholder interviews revealed that the service activity did not follow a standard process sequence, the workshop had not been designed to support process flow, technician resources were not well-coordinated, and spare parts shortages were common.
Technicians also tended to work on multiple vehicles in parallel to stay busy, which disrupted the workflow and stifled the rhythm.
The Quick Changeover (QCO) methodology was deployed to engage the workshop team in mapping the current state process and pinpointing the constraints and inefficiencies.
This activity created a shared understanding of all the improvement opportunities by identifying process wastes such as delays due to waiting for parts and information, excessive walking for tools and equipment, rework and duplication of effort.
The team then developed an ideal process flow from the last load pre-service to the first load post-service to determine what best practice would look like.
The technicians mapped a detailed maintenance work sequence around a critical path, incorporating improvement ideas from all trades to ensure there were no conflicts that could cause delays.
SOLUTION
The detailed maintenance work sequence was documented as standardised work, which explained each service step in the process and related it to a location map of the truck. Each step in the process also had a targeted completion time allocated.
Spare part kits were created, and delivery was scheduled to ensure all spares were available at the start of the service. A process was established to pick kits one week in advance of each service to ensure early detection of shortages and provide time for resolution.
The new work sequence was trialled with each step being timed and monitored in detail to evaluate the overall workflow and check for conflicts between trades. All findings were fed back into the process to refine the standards.
Visual management was established at the lineside to track the progress of each service in real time. The visual management also included KPIs for critical metrics, including labour availability, spare parts DIFOT, and service TAT.
This continuous improvement cycle was repeatedly applied across several services to enhance the workflow sequence, refine the budgeted hours for each task, and establish home positions for tools, equipment, and spare parts.
A sustainable process was established, underpinned by an internal culture of continuous improvement. This enabled the team to streamline the 500-hour service post-engagement and consistently achieve an 8-hour TAT.
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