Lowell Snow, ACTP’s resident mining expert with over 40 years of experience in heavy equipment, has said, “Managing a fleet of machines in mining requires a balancing act between time, cost, and quality. Everyone from the equipment operators, mechanics, and purchasing managers have to work hand-in-hand with one another to anticipate problems that could lead to downtime.”
The three factors Lowell describes (time, cost, and quality) are all interconnected. Let’s take a closer look:
Time
Machine downtime on a mine site reduces productivity of the operation as a whole until the equipment is up and running again. Whether it is planned maintenance or an unplanned breakdown, with the size and complexity of the equipment it can take days to perform even simple repairs.
When a machine (i.e. a wheel loader) becomes inoperable, the operation will see a significant decrease in productivity (and revenue) until it is back scooping and loading product. Since revenue is being lost for every hour the machine is not operating, fleet managers must try to minimize the amount of time to fix the machine.