Smarter Maintenance Lifts Port Railyard Capacity
250+ hours of added production capacity a year, unlocked by realigning possessions
- 3 minutes read
Our client is a dual-listed global mining company with iron ore accounting for roughly half of its global revenue. Its Western Australian iron ore operations span multiple mines, processing hubs and port facilities, connected by more than 1,300 kilometres of rail infrastructure and operated by over 180 locomotives and 10,000 ore cars.
With network availability and capacity constraints limiting volumes and efficiency, the company formed a specialist project team to develop practical proposals to improve performance and establish best-practice operating standards across maintenance, engineering and planning.
ORBIZ was engaged to pressure-test these proposals and challenge existing operating practices. A pilot project assessed maintenance delivery at a railyard in Port Hedland, where poor allocation and utilisation of track possessions were suspected to be driving avoidable downtime.
Realigning maintenance possessions with actual asset needs freed up capacity that once sat locked in avoidable downtime — adding over 250 hours of production time a year, cutting failure-related component replacement costs by $181k, and shifting the network from reactive firefighting to a consistent, disciplined, preventative maintenance rhythm.
250+ hours
50 hours
$181k
The approach
A cross-functional team was formed spanning network-wide integrated planning and remote operations, local planning and scheduling, and maintenance, engineering and operations.
ORBIZ facilitated workshops to map the activities performed by each stakeholder group during asset maintenance delivery, visualising the process and handoffs between departments.
The mapping showed that more than 80% of planned maintenance was being deferred during normal operations, leading to reactive, opportunity-based maintenance. Subjective visual inspections were also triggering ad hoc possessions, adding to production losses.
The solution
ORBIZ conducted a detailed audit of rail equipment assets at the port facilities, cross-referencing them against the published maintenance strategy and planning for each asset.
A key finding was that ore car dumper shutdowns offered a natural opportunity to align rail asset maintenance and possessions — immediately reducing the number of possession events required.
As scheduled track maintenance began aligning with actual completion, the operation shifted from reactive to preventative maintenance, laying the foundation for predictive maintenance models. A further 50 hours a year were freed up and reallocated to major shutdown work in line with manufacturers’ recommendations.
The shift also removed a primary root cause of premature equipment breakdown: geometry-error failures, previously common under reactive maintenance and treated as isolated faults, are now addressed through a preventive approach that accounts for variation between new and old assets — expected to further extend equipment life.
The pilot validated the wider proposals developed by the project team, demonstrating that a coordinated, well-planned approach could deliver similar gains and support an integrated maintenance strategy across the broader Western Australian network.
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