Maintenance Planning in Underground Mining Operations

Many organizations spend too much time searching for—and starting implementation of—new reliability and maintenance concepts, and very little time on implementation and improvements of what they just started. Let me give some examples of my own observations as they relate to the statement above. Some time ago I met with a group of supervisors, planners, and craftspeople—the front line of maintenance—in a mill.

Few tools are as useful to managing the maintenance workload and effectiveness as the Maintenance Backlog. In many companies today management of the maintenance backlog has been neglected. As a result they are generally drowning in their own data. A poorly managed system has a dramatic effect on the entire delivery of maintenance services.

Companies often ask if maintenance planning and scheduling will work if they have a decentralized maintenance organization. Yes, it will. In fact, they need planning and scheduling just as much as a centralized shop. Let's review why.

The technical database plays a critical role as an enabler to the planning and scheduling process. The results of a poor technical database are often hidden but can be substantial. To function well, all eight components of the technical database need to be accurate, accessible, and applied during the planning and scheduling process. Benefits of complete bills of material, well labeled equipment in the field, and easy access to original equipment manufacturer procedures will lead to high quality standard job plans that are produced quickly and reliably.

If you need to implement a new planning and scheduling program, you’re probably discovering that the task can be rather daunting. But there are ways to achieve an environment that will support a planning and scheduling program that works with what you already have in place and takes into account what your team is able to manage throughout implementation and beyond. If you take a closer look at what you already have, putting the final touches on a successful planning and scheduling program may not really be that big a beast to tackle.

Historically, maintenance textbooks have defined a shutdown as "an unplanned equipment failure event that causes an operational production line, process, area or section of a plant to be temporarily turned off or closed for emergency repair, and resumed to operational status immediately following the repair of the failed equipment." Turnarounds are defined as "a planned event that required the closure of an entired operational plant or facility to perform one or many pre-planned technology or system upgrades, equipment upgrades, and maintenance restorations, within a defined time period."

Standard job plans. Be sure your CMMS systems have a way to put in a standard job. That true? yeah? Okay, so Tor mentioned yesterday critical and repetitive work...great place to start and even on a repetitive job it may be something that's really simple but if there's a bill of materials that comes with that job, then you create a standard job plan that just has the bill of material, has the work order coding on it, and another CMMS system that we had at my last job you could actually link the standard job to an equipment number in the background so when you went in to create a work order you just put in the equipment number there's a standard job pull down every standard job that was linked to that equipment select it and create your work order.