Coal Mine AHS Implementation

A 70% reduction in truck stoppages achieved through a disciplined improvement program supported by strong leadership.

The Challenge:

The site was at its final stages of the 2-3 year AHS implementation project and was close to handing over to the BAU run teams. The project team had somewhat disbanded before the final stages, leaving gaps in understanding of what is required to support and maintain OT. 

The site was behind original production targets seeing around 1400 truck stoppages per day. 

The Solution:

• First step was to identify the stoppages which weren’t being measured, tracked or monitored. A project team was stood up to deep dive and solve the challenge behind stoppages causing the low productive movement.
• A 12-week program was run, which focused on discipline to standardisation, discipline to monitoring, discipline to routines and discipline to improvement. By acquiring new knowledge and applying the knowledge to create transformation, a strong relationship was formed between maintenance and technology teams.
• A daily meeting was stood up and formed the basis of all the technology faults. The core of this meeting was the monitoring and reporting done by the technology support team, who focused on increased monitoring and execution of work associated to alerts and alarms as well as increased proactive health checks. 

Key Lessons Learned:

• Following the newly learned methodology, the team saw a reduction in truck stoppages by 70% across a 12 week program from 1400 to 400 per day. The speed to resolve the stoppages was credited to using previous deployment learnings as well as a strong leadership team who were dedicated to the journey of AHS.