Natural Resource & Energy

Business challenge: Helping one of the world's leading producers of base metals increase its extraction capacity and address a chronic fleet reliability issue in their Chilean mine.

Reliability key to delivering results

As with many natural resource industries, the large mining trucks used to mine various base metals are large and expensive. Similar to the other industries we support, these complex mobile assets need to operate reliably in order for the operation to turn a profit regularly.

In the case of this mining company, these $4.5 million-dollar trucks were critical elements of a delivery process that was plagued with chronic shutdowns. On average, these vehicles were breaking down every 22 hours, shutting down the extraction process and crippling production.

Proven process brings FAST results

Referred to as "Mean Time Between Failure", this degree of unreliability prompted AeroInfo to closely examine the operation's maintenance program. Using a process known as the Functional Analysis System Technique (FAST), the AeroInfo project team isolated the root cause of the company's reliability issue: Oil leaks, coolant leaks and transmission leaks.

But the team didn't stop there. With further investigation they were able to identify that the problem was in the supply chain, as the quality and standard of the replacement hoses being used was not high enough.

Increased reliability speaks for itself

Several months after the AeroInfo project team delivered their analysis and recommendations, the mining company's Mean Time Between Failure rate had increased dramatically.

For more information on our Natural Resource & Energy solutions, contact us.