All posts tagged: Bolivia

Client Case Study – Mining – Latin America

Background

Minera San Cristobal (MSC) is a world-class Bolivian mining company and one of the South American country’s largest and most innovative employers. MSC focuses on mining for silver, lead and zinc and is a wholly owned subsidiary of the Sumitomo Corporation, one of Japan’s leading industrial groups.
The San Cristobal mine is located approximately 500 kilometres (310 miles) south of the city of La Paz. The average elevation of the area is approximately 3,900 metres (12,800 feet or 2.4 miles) above sea level. As the nation’s largest mining company, the work can only be accomplished through an ongoing commitment to safety, professionalism, teamwork and transparency.

The Challenge

Jamieson Group found that the planning systems were not being based on resource requirements to attain budget goals and were not being translated into daily and shift plans. Management Operating Systems (MOS) were incomplete and lacked the requirements for proactive decision making. Different perceptions, beliefs and attitudes among the Supervisors caused disconnections and misinterpretations. Expectations on work timing and follow-up need to be implemented and KPIs and expectations are neither well established nor communicated. Teamwork and supervisory skills needed to be developed in order to make the plan happen on a daily basis.

The Approach

The Jamieson Group project approach for both mine operations and mine maintenance was to upgrade and implement MOS improvements within the following elements:

1. Short Term Planning
2. Production Planning
3. Production Scheduling
4. Supervisory Follow – up
5. Reporting & Corrective Action
6. Evaluation and Accountability (KPI’s)

The Project teams’ effort was also focused on the following:

• Develop comprehensive KPI’s and accountability by area.
• Define and Integrate reporting across all operational areas
• Carry out coaching to improve the effectiveness of management and supervisors.
• Educate staff to develop a culture of continuous improvement and heightened awareness of business needs and requirements.
• Educate and coach to develop management and supervisory behaviors with an emphasis on planning, implementation, evaluation, and root cause analysis, problem solving and
  effecting corrective action.
• Development of standard operating practices
• Alignment sessions

The Success

The supervisory controls implemented have corrected the nonproductive supervisory activities like “Hourly Work” that used to be prevalent among maintenance supervisors. Supervisors are now following up on all maintenance tasks and ensuring that equipment planned release times to operations are being met.
The Mine Operations dashboard installed by the Jamieson Group is now being utilised to identify off target performances and subsequently driving supervisors to resolve situations that previously were not being identified.
The weekly Performance Evaluations show a consistent “Tonnes per Truck Moved” above 12,000 tonnes/Equivalent Truck, yielding an annualised average savings of $1.7 million USD.