Maintenance Strategy

As mines utilize a wide range of equipment, each with its own maintenance requirements, coordinating maintenance scheduling for all of them, from heavy machinery to processing plants, presents a challenge due to the diversity of equipment needs. The long planning horizons mines have spanning exploration and development to closure, add complexity to designing a maintenance strategy that considers the entire lifecycle of equipment and infrastructure.

Operational constraints may include matching production goals to maintenance requirements, with necessary trade-offs to be made in scheduled downtime. Remote or harsh locations of mines also pose a logistical challenge for mines, as well as ensuring accurate and up-to-date data regarding equipment performance, usage and conditions.

However, predictive maintenance practices using sensor data, analytics and predictive modeling are transforming how mines strategize maintenance. By effectively leveraging digital twins and other technologies, mines can now predict equipment failures and reduce safety hazards, environmental incidents and production losses.

Key Client Challenges:

1. Which equipment should be included in our maintenance strategy that will be most critical to our operations?
2. What maintenance approach should we adopt for different equipment types – whether reactive, preventive, predictive or condition-based?
3. How can we balance maintenance requirements with maintaining production levels and meeting production targets?
4. What data should we be gathering and analyzing that is crucial for effective maintenance planning?
5. How can we integrate predictive maintenance technologies into our overall maintenance strategy?
6. What maintenance intervals and optional frequency for tasks are suitable for different equipment to minimize breakdowns and downtime?

Designing a maintenance strategy that ensures safety regulation compliance while maintaining operational efficiency can be a complex task. Introducing a new maintenance strategy can also face resistance from employees accustomed to existing practices. Change management efforts are necessary to ensure smooth implementation and adoption of a new maintenance strategy through gained support from employees and management.

Defining key performance indicators (KPIs) and metrics to evaluate strategy effectiveness is also essential for continuous improvement. At Unison Mining, our subject matter experts can work together with your teams to ensure that the necessary processes, controls and systems are implemented to incentivize behavior change and enhance performance management – reinforcing a sustainable maintenance strategy.