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Three Steps to ImprovingThree Steps to ImprovingMine PerformanceMine Performance

— Life Cycle Engineering — Life Cycle Engineering

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Three Steps to Improving Mine PerformanceCombining elements from performance improvement programs while focusing on thepeople side of the equation proves successful for some underground operations

By Steve Fiscor, Editor-in-Chief

Many underground miners view theiroperations as rock factories. Their task,in its simplest form, is to supply the millwith more rock than it can process. Untilthe mine consistently supplies rock atthe level required for the plant to run atfull capacity, the mine will be viewed asthe weak link in the production chain.

Underground mining processes canbe complex, especially when one consid-ers the relationship between develop-ment and production. Add to that othervariables such as shaft scheduling, deliv-ery of materials, drilling and blastingschedules, mucking, the movement ofmen and machinery, etc., and the inter-dependency of related tasks further com-plicates the situation.

If it were a rock factory, would it besafe to assume that management couldalso apply the same practices that haveimproved performance on modern manu-facturing plants? No doubt, the miningindustry is set in its ways and has beenslow to adopt principles, such as contin-uous improvement. Underground miningis inherently dangerous and miningequipment occasionally faces extremes,which makes the job more of a craftthan a process. Some mining companieshave also had negative experienceswith continuous improvement programs.Some embarked on overreaching plansthat ultimately fell short as they lostsight of the goal and failed to keep theminers engaged.

Rather than looking for a silver bullet,perhaps mine planners should get backto basics; plan multiple smaller im-provement projects, engage the miners,set achievable goals, measure theresults, and praise the accomplishments.Bruce Wesner, managing principal, LifeCycle Engineering (LCE), believes in afocused improvement effort—one thatdefines a value stream to identify andovercome obstacles that create perform-ance problems.

LCE bills itself as a firm that pro-vides engineering solutions that deliver

PERFORMANCE OPTIMIZATION

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lasting results by enabling people andorganizations to achieve their full poten-tial. Wesner has more than 25 years ofmaintenance, engineering and manage-ment experience. Certified by Prosci asa change management leader, he isadept at applying change manage-ment principles to create successfulclient outcomes.

Wesner discussed some of LCE’srecent successes in the undergroundhard-rock business at the 2014 Societyof Mining Engineers meeting, which washeld during February, in Salt Lake City,Utah. The program LCE has developedcombines problem-solving aspects ofsome of the more successful continuousimprovement programs with a processthat engages people. Once miners under-stand the end goal and how they aregoing to get there, Wesner said they willsupport the effort.

Optimizing to Perform at aHigher LevelThe three steps to improving mine per-formance are defining the value stream,defining the projects along with the valueproposition, and implementing an organi-zational change plan. Before organiza-tions can determine where they want togo, they need to understand where theycurrently stand. Then, according toWesner, they can understand whereopportunities exist to optimize theprocess and perform at a higher level.

“We concentrate on the people side ofthe operation,” Wesner said. “The peoplepiece is the missing part of most techni-cal implementations.” LCE is certified inthe Prosci change methodology programand the company integrates that with itstechnical solutions.

Mine performance optimization is allabout the loss elimination, Wesnerexplained. “As we started to talk aboutloss with miners, we tried to understand

why it’s acceptable to have mobile equip-ment down for any period of time. Manyorganizations will say, ‘that’s part of whatwe do. We blast and equipment gets tornup because we are dealing with heavystuff,’” he said. Wesner refuses to acceptthat explanation.

To improve under the LCE system,miners have to understand and identifylosses. They have to participate in a prob-lem-solving exercise to determine a rootcause. After that, it’s a matter of findingthe tools, setting priorities and develop-ing an action plan. “We have combinedLean thinking with risk-based asset man-agement,” Wesner said. “Lean is allabout eliminating waste throughout aprocess. So we create a value streammap that starts outside the mine at themill and then works its way back to thedevelopment heading.”

Thinking beyond a process flowchart,the value stream map plots the majormining processes and then incorporatesthe communications and various hand-offs, along with inventory, feeding depart-ments, etc. “We try to identify the con-straints on the value stream,” Wesnersaid. “It could be poor performing assets.It could also be softer elements, such asshaft scheduling to get the right materi-als to the right place at the right time.Instead of coordinating how the shaftoperates on a 24-hour basis, some organ-izations look at the shaft as a system that

© Prosci 2010 www.change-management.com



is there for anyone to use anytime. We tryto put structure to these processes to bet-ter support the business.”

As the company’s name implies, theytend to concentrate on the life of anasset. “If we find we have poor perform-ing assets or assets with a lot of losses,we will focus on that,” Wesner said. “Wewant the lowest total cost of ownership[TCO] and maximize total cost of opera-tion. Understanding how an asset isbeing operated is also important.Problems might relate to how the equip-ment was originally designed. If a mineinvested in inexpensive equipment, assetperformance will probably not be as goodas expected.”

For mine managers and engineers,getting their minds around technicalimprovements to equipment and processis relatively easy; engaging the people iswhere many struggle. “A mining compa-ny can make all of the technical changesit wants, but if it does not get the peopleinvolved, the program will likely fail,”Wesner said. He refers to the peopleaspect of the LCE program as the “secretsauce.”

LCE reviewed many change method-ologies before it found Prosci. Ironically,Prosci is not a change organization; it’sa surveying organization, Wesner ex-plained. The company surveyed 2,000

organizations that successfully complet-ed major management change initiatives.They used the data to create a methodol-ogy that looks at an organization throughan ADKAR approach, one that createsAwareness and Desire, imparts Know-ledge, gives the Ability to succeed, andoffers a means of Reinforcement, as faras measuring the success.

The People Side of ChangeOnce managers become familiar with theADKAR theory, they can readily deter-mine points of resistance, Wesnerexplained. “Change starts with the indi-vidual and an important part of change iscommunication,” Wesner said. “Pre-paring for change, managing change, andreinforcing change are how an organiza-tion succeeds. A communications plan isessential to create awareness and desirefor the change.”

Citing a recent conversation with aplant manager, Wesner asked if they had acommunications plan. The plant managersaid: Yes, we do. We have our quarterlymeeting and I tell them the plan. “That’scommunication, but not necessarily effec-tive communication,” Wesner said. “Agood communications plan relies on sev-eral approaches: town hall meetings, one-on-one conversations, toolbox talks, news-paper articles, email blasts, etc.”

Management also needs feedback.Leadership at the mine has to ask if theaudience understood the message.

Prosci’s ADKAR program generatesfive outputs: a communications plan, acoaching plan, a training plan, sponsorroadmap, and a resistance managementplan. “Many times a mining company willget ready to make a change,” Wesnersaid. “They know where the problems lie,but they refuse to formally address thatsponsor issue or that resistance point inthe organization.”

A formal resistance road map illus-trates points of resistance. LCE paintspeople in the process as red, yellow andgreen. “Resistors are red; red doesn’tmean they are bad, they are just resis-tors,” Wesner said. “They have beendoing it their way for a long time. Theyhaven’t seen what it could be. It doesn’tmean they have to go away or be elimi-nated. They just need to be educated,trained or coached on the value to them.”

Wesner explained that every personneeds to know what’s in it for me(WIIFM). “We have to create that WIIFMfor everyone in the organization to getthem to adopt this change,” Wesner said.“Once we have the road map with thereds, yellows, greens, we understandresistance points. Then we can design aresistance management plan.”





The LCE plan spends much more timeon the people side of the equation thanmore tactical elements of the change. “Ifyou invest 70% of the time on the peopleside, technical implementation will beadopted more quickly,” Wesner said. “Acoaching and training program addressesthe reds and yellows. Sometimes the yel-lows can be more of an issue than thereds. They are sitting on the fence. Theyare not sure which way they want to go.”

Companies that implement a continu-ous improvement program can measuresuccess by a return on investment (RoI).The RoI might be measured by profit,increased tonnage or improved safety sta-tistics. What affects the RoI is the speedof adoption, utilization and proficiency.Wesner refers to the speed of adoption asthe valley of despair. “The faster themine gets through that period, the higherthe RoI. “As the miners take ownershipand become more proficient with theplan, the RoI only increases.”

Miners need to visualize a plan beforethey can embrace it. For this aspect ofthe training, Wesner turns to A3Thinking, which is based on Toyota’sone-page production management plans.An A3 piece of paper measures 11- x17-in. The plan is broken into five keyareas: background, what is it we aregoing to do and why; current situation;

future conditions, what do we want it tobe; the action plan, projects to addressthe constraints; and key performanceindicators, more production, increasedprofits, etc.

An A3 plan needs to remain simple,Wesner said. “We need people takingownership from the beginning and theyneed a simple tool that they can easilyreference,” Wesner said. “Many organiza-tions have ongoing projects that could beincorporated into an A3 document. Youdon’t want a 100, but you could have 10.A good strategy is to have a queue and,as one project is completed, the next oneis ready to launch.”

The performance improvement pro-cess should eliminate unstable perform-ance and reduce variability. “We haveto manage the noise at the beginningand get the process under control,”Wesner said.

Wesner recently completed perform-ance improvement programs at two large-scale mining projects. “When we firstdiscussed our system, there was immedi-ate pushback with the mining companyexplaining that it had previously partici-pated in performance improvementefforts before,” Wesner said. “Afterward,they admitted they have never done any-thing like this and never achieved thislevel of performance.”

Case StudiesAt an underground hard-rock operation inCanada, the milling side was running at40%. It was starved for ore. The minewas able to blast three times per day.Could they get to four or five blasts perday? Wesner spent about two weeks map-ping the underground production processto build the value stream. “We startedwhere the milling process begins andworked our way backward,” Wesner said.“We mapped everything.” Ore extractioninvolved two separate processes: devel-opment and production. The dark linesrepresent material flow and the dottedlines represent information flow. At theend of the value stream exercise, theyhad created a spaghetti chart.

Several red stars can be seen on thecurrent state value stream especiallyfor information communication on thedevelopment side. Wesner refers to thesered stars as angry clouds, which repre-sent non-value added activity. “Thesewere opportunities for us to address,”Wesner said. The angry clouds includesearching for materials, waiting for mate-rials, complex materials movements, nothaving materials at the right place at theright time.

Then they designed a chart of whatthey thought the process would look likein a perfect world. “We needed to elimi-

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nate a lot of that spaghetti, but we had tobe careful,” Wesner said. “This is under-ground mining and there is a lot of risk.It’s dangerous and bad things can hap-pen. As we redefine or redesign theprocesses, we do not want to introducemore risk into the operation.”

LCE looked specifically at improvingcommunications, which has nothing todo with the actual mining process. It’ssimply information flow between the var-ious steps.

On an underground walk-through,Wesner asked: Does everybody have thetools they need when they need them?The answer from the manager was:Absolutely. During a raise borer move, heasked to see the toolbox. The miners hada big empty toolbox. “Tools were scatteredeverywhere,” Wesner said. “That’s inef-fective and it relates to ownership issues,primarily cultural and behavioral issues.The miners needed to put the tools awayso that when the next crew arrived theycould get to work straight away. This isbasic blocking and tackling.”

The mine was able to eventually blastfour times per day. Reaching that level ofproduction represented a $15 millionbottom line impact. “They couldn’t seethemselves accomplishing this goal,because they could not visualize theirvalue stream,” Wesner said.

Another mine was unable to meet theproduction plan for the year. The prob-lem revolved around the raise boringprocess and the effectiveness of havingthe right tools in place. After looking atthe value stream, they focused on shaftefficiency as far as getting materials tothe right place at the right time. Becausemining was a drift-and-fill process, theyhad to back-fill drifts before they couldmove to other parts of the ore body. Thatwas a restraint.

Four or five projects were identified toimprove mine performance. As an exam-ple, they wanted to complete a drift andfill in 14 days, but it always seemed totake them 28 days. After mapping it outon paper, they developed a playbook thatsaid they could do it in 14 days. “They

began to execute according to the play-book and they completed the process in12 days,” Wesner said. “Moving from 28days to 12 days was a significant gain inaccessing more ore. That had a $120million impact to the bottom line andthey met their production numbers byjust stepping back and looking at theprocess from the outside.”

Wesner is quick to point out that noth-ing that has been covered here is new.These techniques have been around for15 to 20 years. “We are just trying tobring them together,” Wesner said.“When we did these projects, we didn’task the engineering teams or leadershipteams to implement the plans. We wentto the miners doing the work and gotthem to take ownership. Afterward, whatwe heard from the miners was: We want-ed to help, but we were never asked.”

These results came from engagingthe organization in a different way. It stillrequires active and visible leadership tocelebrate the small victories. That’s wherethe company builds positive momentum.



Reprint courtesy of Life Cycle Engineering (www.LCE.com)



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