Unlock the true value of your site assets with Holistic Asset Management

Holistic Asset Management - Australian Mining Review

MANAGING YOUR mine site assets effectively is a crucial element across the life cycle of a mine and one that if done correctly will ensure maximum throughput and profitability.

Effective asset management takes into consideration how best to ensure mining assets are used in the most optimal way, minimising operational downtime and maximising the reliability of the asset.

It also means improved production efficiency. Having effective asset strategies driving timely and regular maintenance, repairs and equipment replacement is conducted, instances of unplanned downtime are reduced alongside the associated high costs.

In addition, regulatory health and safety standards are met or exceeded and this results in a superior safety record for a mining company and accident reduction for its staff.

According to Dave Alexander – managing director of asset management company Holistic Asset Management, which primarily assists mining companies to improve the reliability and availability of both fixed and mobile heavy equipment via a data driven, holistic approach to reliability and engineering – many companies view asset management as just another business cost rather than a value-added activity.

David Alexander - Holistic Asset Management
Dave Alexander, Managing Director – Holistic Asset Management

And he is on a mission to explain to the mining sector why it is important to reframe the way we think about asset management and to help miners comprehend the value of managing assets through delivering asset reliability improvement initiatives and knowledge transfer to the engineering and technical professionals.

“The level of maturity of asset management processes and systems usually determines the level of performance and the value that these assets are adding to the bottom line,” he says.

“We have witnessed many organisations facing asset issues in their operation process. They are from various industries, but the problems they have are quite similar. We know how to solve these frustrations, and most importantly, we know the numerous benefits behind it.

“We believe that managing assets can bring great value contribution to an organisation’s success”.

Services

Headquartered in Brisbane but with offices across the country, Holistic Asset Management commenced operation in 2016 and provides specialist services in asset management, reliability engineering and maintenance management.

The company is the reseller in Australia and New Zealand of ReliaSoft Software from HBM Prenscia, and provides results-oriented training solutions (and mentoring) that focus on methodologies and software tools that can be employed to improve asset management processes (reliability, maintenance, performance and capability) and balance cost, performance and risk.

The ReliaSoft software provides unique and integrated approaches for product test, design and maintenance optimisation. The products support a wide range of reliability and maintainability analysis techniques, such as life data analysis, accelerated life testing, system modelling and RAM analysis, reliability growth, FRACAS, FMEA and RCM analysis to meet and improve reliability of your products, processes and optimise maintenance planning.

Reliability training is provided to beginners in the field right through to advanced reliability theory and methods.

Training modules the company provides include:

  • Introduction to reliability
  • Weibull / Life Data Analysis Training
  • RCM/FMEA Training
  • Reliability Block Modelling
  • Root Cause Analysis

The training is customised to a client’s needs using examples relevant to their industry to invoke a deeper understanding of the concepts.

The company has already achieved an astonishing number of project successes within its seven years of operations and the mining sector is one the company stands out in, partly attributable to the excellent return on investments that miners see, but also due to the company’s breadth of employee talent.

Its team of reliability engineering experts has extensive knowledge and hands on experience in the field and on average each team member has twenty years of experience in reliability engineering.

Onsite product experience with Hitachi and Liebherr coupled with OEM experience with companies such as Komatsu and Caterpillar mean it is well placed to execute asset management and operational readiness projects.

Describing itself as a leading provider of advanced reliability engineering service and technology to the asset intensive industries Holistic Asset Management works with customers to develop tailored solutions that meet the needs of miners and help them realise significant savings in their maintenance costs and increase asset availability. Returns on investment tend to be a ratio of around five to one.

The company boasts an impressive portfolio of technical capabilities including:

Maintenance strategy and optimisation

If miners have a new asset being introduced to site, or want to extract more value from an existing asset, Holistic Asset Management Engineers use Maintenance Plan Optimisation, Reliability Centred Maintenance (RCM) and Failure Modes Effects and Criticality Analysis (FMECA) methodologies to develop maintenance strategies.

The preventive maintenance strategies that are implemented will greatly affect the asset performance, where comprehensive, accurate and consistent strategies will guarantee successful implementation and adoption. The company’s extensive FMEA Enterprise Library lists thousands of components with known functions and failure modes. This enables it to offer a streamlined process for Asset FMEA application, which allows for rapid implementation of client projects.

Condition monitoring strategies

Holistic Asset Management engineers have extensive OEM and site experience with machine electronic health data, oil analysis, thermography, vibration analysis and non-destructive testing. Its team helps miners build a condition monitoring plan that supports their maintenance objectives. This includes work instructions for data collection routines, back-end data management, customised alarm triggers and related corrective actions for execution by mechanical and electrical trades. Prescriptive and predictive maintenance bring value to a business by improving operational efficiency, reducing downtime and maintenance costs, and maximizing asset utilization.

Work instruction development

Upon creation or optimisation of an asset maintenance strategy, Holistic Asset Management can develop work instructions to ensure the maintenance strategy is executed efficiently and effectively. Its work instruction development philosophy ensures maintainer safety, increased maintenance efficiency and maximises availability and reliability by ensuring potential failures are identified.

Bill of materials (BOMS) development

BOMs are essential element of the planning and execution of maintenance strategies. Holistic AM’s team can create BOMs to increase planning, maintenance and supply chain efficiencies. Upon creation of BOMs, its team will package the data suitable for a miners Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) or Computerised Maintenance Management System (CMMS).

Master data development and management

With accurate and complete master data, maintenance teams can make well-informed decisions about when and how to perform maintenance on assets. This can help to minimize downtime and improve the overall availability and reliability of equipment, which in turn can reduce costs and improve productivity. Holistic AM’s all-encompassing approach to managing master data ensures that the implementation of maintenance strategies is both precise and efficient, from the initial planning and scheduling stages to the actual execution of maintenance tasks. This approach immediately benefits a sites maintenance team by providing them with the most current master data needed to carry out the maintenance plan.

Spare parts analyses and optimisation

Ensuring that the right parts are available when needed reduces unplanned maintenance downtime and consequently increases equipment availability. Maintenance strategies, asset age, failure distributions, parts costs, logistics delays, failure effects and consequences need to be assessed against the criticality of the component to ensure clients can make accurate and up-to-date decisions about spare parts inventory and spares management.

Root cause analyses

Holistic Asset Management has dedicated engineers that educate and empower mining companies through a structured process driven approach to root cause analysis. Its approach ensures buy-in from key stakeholders and ensures the best possible outcome for a client. It offers reliability engineering support to determine the root cause and manage recommendations and actions on behalf of the client. It remains independent and impartial as a trusted process driven expert to uncover the root cause of an asset’s issues.

Life cycle cost modelling

Life cycle cost modelling in reliability engineering is a method of evaluating the total cost of owning and operating an asset over its entire life cycle. This includes costs such as acquisition, installation, operation, maintenance, and disposal. Holistic Asset Management models a miners assets using Reliability Block Diagrams (RBD). By analysing the RBD, HolisticAM can identify the most critical components of the system in terms of both cost and reliability, and determine the most cost-effective maintenance and replacement strategies for those components. Additionally, RBDs can be used to model the effect of different maintenance strategies on the system’s overall life cycle cost and reliability.

Maintenance plan optimisation

Using a data driven approach to model asset performance, maintenance plan optimisation aims at efficiently reducing the cost of operational maintenance and the risk of failures to help miners achieve measurable performance improvements.

Case Studies

Caterpillar 994K Maintenance Strategy Development

Services Required: Maintenance Strategy Development, FMECA

Location: Australia

Introduction

HolisticAM’s client had purchased a Caterpillar 994K wheel loader and had determined whilst the OEM maintenance strategy was a good starting point, they were concerned that that in the absence of a risk-based maintenance strategy the reliability of the loader would be compromised in the long term as the loader ages.

HolisticAM was engaged by the mining company during the build phase to develop a Failure Modes Effects and Criticality Analysis (FMECA) maintenance strategy, work instructions and SAP Master Data Requirements.

The key objective was to provide its client with a risk-based maintenance strategy where failure modes, their effects, risk profile and maintenance tasks to address the risks were clearly identified and transparent.

The project utilised a hybrid onsite-offsite execution approach and was delivered on time and within budget. The HolisticAM team remained engaged post strategy implementation to evaluate its effectiveness.

The challenge

Leveraging its OEM and site-based experience HolisticAM understands the challenges that mining companies face.

This was the first time the site had purchased a Caterpillar wheel loader and as a consequence a degree of unfamiliarity associated with the asset. Despite this, the client was comfortable that the skillset of their maintainers and culture would ensure maintenance was completed to a high standard.

A significant challenge facing the client was particularly around condition monitoring. The client identified that historically condition monitoring was an area that needed improvement. There were unknowns regarding oil sampling techniques and the level of skill within the maintenance and engineering department to adequately interpret results and trouble shoot / investigate / fault find.

The solutions

The client chose HolisticAM based on its OEM, condition-monitoring expertise, on-site experience and proven track of delivering results in the mining industry.

As with all projects executed by HolisticAM, its methodical approach includes identifying the current state, identify and review opportunities for improvement and presenting these opportunities to the client for consideration.

HolisticAM worked closely with the client’s engineering, planning and maintenance execution team to undertake the following reliability engineering tasks:

  • Develop FMECA based Maintenance strategy with consultation from key site-based stakeholders. The company’s extensive FMEA Enterprise Library in HsM (Holistic Strategy Management) software contained a Caterpillar 994K Wheel loader with components with known function and failure modes. This enabled the company to offer a streamlined process for wheel loader FMEA application, which allows for rapid implementation.
  • Provide in-house training on oil sampling techniques to ensure a clean and accurate oil sample is taken
  • Provide training on interpreting oil analysis results specific to the wheel loader compartments

The results

Key deliverables included:

  • FMECA-based maintenance strategy
  • Work Instructions that were clear and concise, packaged and sequenced to maximise maintenance efficiency.
  • Master Data load sheet generation
  • Oil sampling techniques practical training
  • Oil analysis interpretation

Komatsu 930E Maintenance Strategy Optimisation

Services Required: Maintenance Strategy Optimisation, FMECA

Location: Australia

Introduction

The Komatsu 930E Electric Drive Haul Truck had been used by the client to remove overburden across multiple open cut mines in Australia.

The client had identified that their 930E fleet had not achieved their forecast availability with numerous major component failures increasing the burden on maintenance teams. HolisticAM was engaged by the mining company to undertake a holistic review of their fleet of Komatsu 930E Electric Drive Trucks from a maintenance perspective.

The objective of this project was to understand key drivers for unavailability, identify recommendations and assist with the implementation by working closely with site and corporate key stakeholders.

The project utilised a hybrid onsite-offsite execution approach and was delivered on time and within budget. The HolisticAM team remained engaged post strategy implementation to evaluate its effectiveness.

The challenge

The client had a FMECA based maintenance strategy for the truck, however was experiencing significant unplanned failures. During planned maintenance (PM) services defects were often detected when close to failure resulting in significant maintenance over runs. Over runs combined with unplanned failures resulted in a significant maintenance burden on the maintenance teams. This posed additional challenges including:

  • Uncertainty in the quality of the preventive maintenance strategy (particularly associated with on-condition tasks and planned component changeouts)
  • Unknown maintenance efficiency of the maintenance execution team
  • The client had also indicated that the current tactics had diverted from the FMECA.

The solutions

As with all projects executed by HolisticAM, its methodical approach includes identifying the current state, identify and review opportunities for improvement and presenting these opportunities to the client for consideration.

HolisticAM worked closely with the client’s engineering, planning and maintenance execution team to undertake the following reliability engineering tasks:

  • Downtime Data Analysis to determine systems, subsystems and maintainable items that contributed to unplanned maintenance on the trucks
  • Life Data Analysis (LDA) / Weibull was undertaken to determine the Failure Characteristics, Mean Time Between Failure (MTBF) and reliability.
  • Review of service day maintenance execution across all the maintenance crews
  • Review of Mean Time to Repair (MTTR) to identify maintenance efficiency
  • Identification of truck upgrades released by the OEM and implemented by other sites to reduce unplanned failures and improve component reliability
  • Developing proposals using Net Present Value methodology to justify the implementation of machine upgrades with a focus to reduce total cost of ownership

The results

Key deliverables included:

  • Updated FMECA-based maintenance strategy
  • Revised service sheets
  • Improvements on PM service-day maintenance execution
  • Recommendations to reduce MTTR
  • Truck upgrade/improvement documentation detailing priority and value add to the business

HolisticAM was also able to create additional value by:

Over the next 6 months each trucks available time had increase by 112 hours.

Increase in fleet availability and MTBF > 90 hours consistently

Decrease in MTTR by decreasing time to identify, acknowledge, repair and verify.

FMECA-based maintenance strategy with tasks focusing on preventive maintenance to ensure machine issues are detected in a proactive manner.

Concentrator Operational Readiness

Services required: Operational Readiness for a Nickel Mine

Location: Kambalda, Western Australia

Introduction

HolisticAM partnered with an operation to provide support a concentrator’s reintroduction to service after a period of care & maintenance. The objective of this project was to support their operational readiness project by providing specialist reliability engineering services. HolisticAM mobilised a specialist reliability engineer to review, assess, and report on asset criticality, asset integrity, and the completeness of the SAP technical object structure, and to develop baseline maintenance strategies and a list of critical spares. The project utilised a hybrid onsite-offsite execution approach and was delivered on time and within budget.

The challenge

The site was preparing to recommission the concentrator after a five-year period of care & maintenance. The operational readiness manager identified several shortcomings in their preparedness to perform preventative and corrective maintenance during the initial stages of operation.

  • The SAP technical object structure did not accurately reflect the installed assets
  • There was uncertainty regarding the condition of many of the mechanical assets in the concentrator
  • There was uncertainty in the quality and coverage of basic preventative maintenance strategies
  • There was uncertainty in the identification and availability of sufficient spare parts to support the initial stages of operation

As a result, the site required specialist engineering support to ensure the maintenance function was prepared to maintain equipment availability during recommissioning and initial operations.

The solution

Following initial consultation with the client, HolisticAM offered the following services for this project:

  • Alignment of existing Functional Location structure to the installed asset base
  • Assessment of the operational criticality and material risk for each asset in alignment with corporate standards
  • Assessment of the operational integrity of mechanical assets across site
  • Assurance that all assets were covered by appropriate baseline preventative maintenance strategies
  • Assessment of the description and quantity of recommended critical spare parts

A specialist reliability engineer spent an extended period onsite to collect all required data and information. This was then processed offsite to produce the final deliverables.

The results

Key deliverables included:

  • A detailed document defining all required alterations to the SAP Functional Locations FLOCs for the site
  • A comprehensive SME- reviewed analysis of multi-criteria operational criticality and corporate material risk for each maintainable unit
  • A comprehensive multi-criteria integrity assessment of each maintainable unit based on observation, work order history, and condition data
  • A detailed assessment and gap analysis of the quality and coverage of existing SAP maintenance items across all maintainable units
  • A detailed assessment and set of recommendations relating to the identification and quantity of spare parts required to support recommissioning and initial operations
  • A set of FMEA-based maintenance strategies for the belt conveying systems

HolisticAM created value for the operations by:

  • Ensuring that SAP accurately reflects the current reality of the installed asset base
  • Providing advance warning of specific items of equipment that may require corrective work prior to recommissioning
  • Providing confidence in the readiness of their baseline preventative maintenance strategies and the availability of spare parts to assist in minimising disruption during recommissioning and initial operations

To book a 30-minute introduction discussion call with Holistic Asset Management go to:  holisticam.com.au/contact-us/

 

 

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