Reducing Down Time Boosts the Bottom Line for Esconidia
Featured in “Productivity Review” was this co-project between Kaltech and Esconidia. With Kaltech’s guidance and help the operation was able to shave down time on its Mills by 3.5%, resulting in an income boost of roughly $35 Million!
Here is an excerpt from the article:
Luis (Luis Jofre, Group Leader Shutdown Planning and OE Coach) said one of the key factors in improving shutdown time was the support of a relines specialist company from Australia.
“During the benchmarking stage of the project we started looking for the best reliners in the market. We appointed Kaltech (former Murchison Relines) of Australia to assess our reline practices. “Later we decided to form a combined reliner crew with half of the personnel provided by Kaltech and the other half by Escondida (most of them members of the OE team).
“The idea of using the combined crew is still in use and it will continue as a way of exposing our people to the best practices brought by Kaltech.”
This OE project also showed Escondida that it was possible to achieve significant improvements in shutdown planning and liner replacement.
“Our experience has shown that, although most of the findings of the OE team were known to the concentrator’s middle an upper management, the OE methodology gave us the tools to create the ownership of the ideas among the workers – ideas that without their commitment were just that, ideas,” Luis said.
“The best practices are now being institutionalized. The future brings the challenge of maintaining the good results achieved and transferring the learnings to the new concentrator under construction (phase IV).”
