Improving maintenance costs could save industry billions

Reducing the cost of maintaining underground mining equipment could save the mining industry billions of dollars a year, says Dr. W.R (Bob) Dengler, who heads a prominent mine contracting company. Dengler, chairman of the board and chief executive officer of international mining contract firm Dynatec, blasted the people responsible for underground machine maintenance. “I think we do a lousy job in maintenance,” he said here recently. “We do a rudimentary job.” Dengler, keynote speaker at the opening session of the 6th maintenance/engineering division meeting of the Canadian Institute of Mining and Metallurgy (CIM), gave some practical advice for the 262 CIM members from across Canada who attended.

He does not agree with the Centre for Resources Studies in Kingston, Ont., which pegs the cost of maintenance labor and the cost of machine parts at 30% of the total cost to produce a salable product from an underground mine. Dengler says it is about 16%.

“If we were to cut that by a quarter in the 1990s, we would be saving $4 billion nationwide, which could keep (Canadian mines) competitive (internationally) for years to come,” he said.”To maintain our position as a major mineral producer, a global perspective is a necessity.”

Over the past 20 years, big gains in productivity brought about bigger and faster mining machines. But those gains are behind us, Dengler said. Although recent gains in productivity have been achieved through improved equipment performance, major improvements will come through better maintenance, he predicted.

Dengler admitted Canadian mining companies are starting to take maintenance more seriously, citing the proposed mining mechanical option proposed for mine engineering students at Queen’s University in Kingston, Ont., as an example. But the results of that initiative are many years down the road.

He foresees significant changes in underground equipment maintenance in the 1990s if several simple steps are taken immediately. Dengler offered a few constructive suggestions of his own:

“There is a different philosophy underground. We tolerate roads that you would only use an all- terrain-vehicle on. You would never see those on a surface road. We have to take road maintenance underground seriously. We should be operating mining machinery at high speeds, but we don’t because the roadways are too rough.”

Reliability Centred Maintenance, a method of analyzing data on machine failures to allow people to anticipate them before their occurrence, will become the norm in mining in the 1990s, Dengler said. “The old adage: “If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it, doesn’t work any more.”

Computerized on-board monitoring equipment, common in open pit mining equipment and even automobiles, is another important component of a system to improve machine maintenance underground.

Automatic lubrication systems, also common on open pit equipment, is not used underground. Dengler asked, “Why?”

Closed systems for fuel and lubrication services are rarely used underground. Yet the main advantage of the system, namely cleanliness is a major source of improved productivity through faster fuelling without spillage.

Since damage to equipment often occurs during the loading cycle, major mining companies have exerted pressure on research institutions such as the Canadian Centre for Automation and Robotics in Mining at Ecole Polytechnique in Montreal to develop a fully automated underground loader.

“This seems akin to trying to put a man on the moon before you even orbit the earth,” Dengler said. “First, let’s have a miner drive his scoop up to the muck pile, put his hands up in the air and let the machine load the bucket automatically. This would be more conducive to long component life and equipment availability.”