A min­ing com­pa­ny reduces costs after improv­ing oper­a­tional efficiency

Key results

About the client 

This multi­na­tion­al com­pa­ny with oper­a­tions across the world is one of the world’s lead­ing pro­duc­ers of con­cen­trat­ed phos­phate and potash. The com­pa­ny par­tic­i­pates in every aspect of crop nutri­tion­al devel­op­ment, which includes man­u­fac­tur­ing fer­tilis­ers and ani­mal feed for the agri­cul­ture industry. 

The chal­lenge

The South Amer­i­can branch of the com­pa­ny was going through a major trans­for­ma­tion, but pro­duc­tiv­i­ty was low and costs were high. They need­ed to reduce main­te­nance costs with­out impact­ing and ide­al­ly improv­ing reli­a­bil­i­ty ratios. They also want­ed to stan­dard­ise the main­te­nance process across all units. 

What we did

We imple­ment­ed the fol­low­ing improvements:

Improved effi­cien­cy and adher­ence to man­age­ment procedures

The teams reviewed all cur­rent as-is man­age­ment tools and iden­ti­fied how to improve them using best prac­tices. They devel­oped and imple­ment­ed a stan­dard­ised main­te­nance man­age­ment sys­tem with new KPIs and cre­at­ed var­i­ous main­te­nance man­age­ment controls.

Improved busi­ness processes

Imple­ment­ed best plan­ning and pro­gram­ming prac­tices, such as a mas­ter sched­ule to allo­cate resources effi­cient­ly, lev­el work­loads, and improve mate­ri­als man­age­ment prac­tices This result­ed in a stock reduc­tion of 12%.

Reduced sup­pli­ers’ con­tract costs

Estab­lished a support/contractor man­age­ment process. We sub­se­quent­ly reviewed and updat­ed sev­en­teen key spe­cial­ist con­tracts, result­ing in sig­nif­i­cant savings.

Installed a new organ­i­sa­tion structure

… with redesigned roles and responsibilities.

Improved labour pro­duc­tiv­i­ty  

As work exe­cu­tion process­es became more stream­lined, labour costs went down by 14% as the com­pa­ny need­ed less man hours. Pro­duc­tiv­i­ty of main­te­nance man­age­ment resources also improved.

Trained staff in the new ways of working

Staff affect­ed by the changes were exten­sive­ly trained and coached in the new ways of work­ing to ensure sus­tain­abil­i­ty. We per­formed sus­tain­abil­i­ty eval­u­a­tions that ensured the new work­ing prac­tices were embed­ded and ful­ly adopted.

Results

The organ­i­sa­tion achieved all the objec­tives of the trans­for­ma­tion pro­gramme and now has a more effi­cient and effec­tive main­te­nance function.