Shovel Fleet Availability Improvements at Gibraltar Mine

2016

Mr Brandon Nikolaisen (Reliability Engineer (EIT), Mine Maintenance - Gibraltar Mine), Mr Zoltan WLukacs (Manager, Reliability - Gibraltar Mine)

In 2013, with shovel availabilities significantly below levels needed to sustain consistent feed to the newly commissioned mill expansion, site leadership challenged operations teams to improve shovel reliability and runtime. In response, the site team aligned efforts between mine and maintenance operations, maintenance planning, reliability engineering, supply chain, OEMs and vendors to achieve a significant and sustainable improvement to shovel fleet availability. This presentation highlights the journey taken on Gibraltar’s approach to achieving a sustainable 10% increase in shovel availability over a period of 18 months. The strategy, processes and actions taken to accomplish this objective were applied to other areas of the mine resulting in overall improvements to equipment availability, maintenance team performance and a change to the site maintenance culture.