How the right partners can help fill the expertise gap for miners
A pervasive trait for companies across every industry is the challenge of gaining a competitive advantage. This is especially true in the mining sector, where companies are challenged to maintain high productivity while operating in extremely harsh conditions, sometimes more than 20 hours per day, against increasingly tight project timelines and budgets.
When productivity is a priority, the mining industry needs to ensure staffing is optimized and that critical machinery has maximum utilization. These goals can be supported by world-class suppliers who bring a suite of lubrication solutions to the industry relationship.
Holistic maintenance program
Studies* have shown that 96% of mining maintenance staff have experienced an equipment breakdown in the last three years and 56% believe this is directly related to poor lubrication application or management. The challenge for companies is a shift in mindset – companies must think beyond lubricants as another product to be purchased within an increasingly tightening budget. Instead, lubricants should be just one element of a holistic maintenance program designed with an innovative supply partner that will provide quality products along with a suite of tailored services. It can be considered a best practice to find a lubricant supplier that provides solutions to prevent maintenance issues as an effective method to help increase business profitability and sustainability.
Your relationship with your lubricant supplier should provide more than product dropped at your shop. It should form the foundation of a progressive maintenance program that yields results through a solutions-focused approach from highly trained, field-based engineers with deep industry expertise.
At a minimum, your supplier should provide a complimentary site visit and maintenance practice assessment. Areas of focus for the assessment should include a standard review of lubricant storage and handling, contamination control, lubricant application practices, oil condition monitoring analysis and maintenance frequency. A world class supplier should also identify knowledge gaps for employees and offer a structured coaching plan to upskill or reskill as needed. A partner supplier will also analyze maintenance data, beyond the product supplied, to devise actionable recommendations, standard procedures and establish KPIs (key performance indicators) to help optimize equipment usage.
Following the completion of the on-site assessment, improvement strategies should be identified by field-based experts with an expected value delivery, in cost savings or productivity increases, along with the projected completion date for improvement projects. Follow up assessments should be completed on a set interval to ensure continuous monitoring and improvement. In response to customer needs, harnessing technology to deliver value through continuously evolving solutions, such as on-vehicle oil analysis sensors, web-based applications and long-life products is critical and should be leveraged and explored with your supplier and solutions provider.
Consistent collaboration with your supplier prioritizes a proactive maintenance regimen versus a reactive, transactional, product-focused approach. A supplier’s crucial role is to assist in understanding why the equipment failure occurred and what solution can be implemented to prevent it from happening again. Most importantly, the supplier should leverage their technical services and expertise to find ways to deliver business value beyond the product they supply.
As technology and industry trends are constantly changing, mining companies can lessen the burden of staying up to date by seeking external counsel from trusted, trained, and passionate engineers who provide industry-leading solutions that are not available in-house. By working with a supplier who provides this knowledge, you are adding to your team and enabling your staff to focus on the jobs they were hired to do.
Filling the expertise gap
In a recent example, a large multinational company based in Canada was experiencing a decrease in their MTBF (mean time between failures) in their operational critical rotating equipment, along with an increase in wear metal flaggings during routine oil analysis. This resulted in increased maintenance cost and NPT (non-productive time). The company’s maintenance and reliability staff lacked the time and expertise to complete a full investigation or design a solution to the problem. Instead, they retained a leading lubricant supplier to deliver expertise and technical services and perform a complete investigation with root cause analysis. The analysis resulted in an understanding of why the failures were occurring, and eventual identification of a solution that saved the company an estimated $2.5 million annually.
Lubricants comprise only 3-5% of a typical maintenance budget and are often treated like a consumable such as a bolt or a tube of sealant. As a result, relationships with lubricant suppliers are often treated as transactional. However, leveraging the right lubricant supplier to design a solutions-based maintenance program can unlock exponential benefits for an organization. These benefits spread beyond reduced maintenance costs and increased equipment reliability, allowing companies to leverage expertise that facilitates upskilling and reskilling of current staff, potentially increasing talent retention rates and desirability for inbound recruits.
Considering the broad benefits for mining companies of ranging sizes, a lubrication program and supplier partnership should prioritize solutions-based services over mere product application to fill key industry gaps concerning worker knowledge, equipment breakdown prevention and maximized efficiency. CMJ
*Statistics based on a survey, commissioned by Shell Lubricants and conducted by research firm Edelman Intelligence, of 181 international mining sector staff who purchase, influence the purchase of, or use lubricants as part of their job from November to December 2015.
Scott Kwas is Shell Canada Technical Team Lead and Alan Harris is Shell Business Development Manager for Services in North America.
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