Flow of Ore

Our client, Glencore Copper Africa, engaged APC to investigate a hoisting shaft that had an ageing infrastructure and performance below expectations.  Reporting on the hoisting activity was manual and the information was inaccurate and 24 hours old.   The choices were to perform a substantial upgrade of the hoist, or to improve the performance of the existing hoist, while not materially impacting production.

APC determined that the performance of the existing hoist could be improved, by deploying a real-time monitoring and tracking system that provided visibility, stoppage recording, and automated communication.   The design criteria were rapidly installable, highly visible, and conducive to cultural change and sustainability.

Once the hoist was instrumented, APC PA was deployed to analyse the fundamentals of performance: cycle times, maintenance and operator influence.   Through the visual management of hoist movement:

1. Night shift performance was improved
2. Statutory and non-statutory was observed, and
3. Driver breaks were reduced to 20 minutes

The second phase was to improve the “Control Room Culture” – by providing tools to allow the rapid identification and response to stoppages. APC PA detects stoppages outside tolerance, and prompts for a reason.  These reasons were standardised across the sites, allowing the development of a common response to issues.

Hourly reports are distributed to key personnel to track manager notification, actions, and resolution of downtimes.