Case Studies

Bluefield brought our asset experience together in collaboration with data specialists to assist a client get more from their assets.  

Too often the operational readiness work for mobile plant that’s the same as existing fleet on a site is considered a “copy and paste” project.

Bluefield’s practical approach to maintenance adds value to the FMEA process by identifying realistic failure modes and focusing on appropriate PM tasks. 

Sometimes, the evidence confronts you with a reality that is completely different from what you want to see.

In some cases, indirect causes are obvious, and you can be thorough without doing a full RCA.

An example of why retaining and analysing failed parts is essential to getting to the root cause of a failure.

How missing the importance of the strategy execution almost created months of work for no practical benefit to asset reliability.

Introduction 

We recently completed a project for a mining client where the brief was to review critical spares. They had previously identified critical equipment. The manager assumed that the critical spares associated with his equipment would be in a register and the spares were being managed by supply. 

The Bluefield AMS materials management assessment process provides maintenance and supply teams with a road map for materials management success.  

Our client, PanAust, is an operator of two very efficient metals mines in Laos with larger projects in other parts of the world. PanAust wanted to develop a life cycle cost management approach for their mining assets in order to ensure the assets’ life cycles were managed in a way to maximise their value to their business. With many hundreds of machines, it is essential to know that the life[...]

When prices for commodities come under pressure so do the margins of operators. In order to maintain margins and reduce costs in a sustainable manner, it is essential to remove loss and waste. Costs can be reduced in the short term by delaying maintenance expenditure and at times this may be necessary, but to reduce costs without risking throughput it is necessary to eliminate loss and waste[...]

Oil sampling and analysis as a condition monitoring program has been around for many years as part of operating and maintaining heavy mining equipment. The program and photos cited in this case study were from an open-cut coal mine that kicked off their oil sampling program in the 70’s. However, after some time this site reflected on the experiences of theirs and other mines. They began to[...]

Over the years it has become common practice to discard failed parts without any review or inspection. When the failed part is thrown out without an inspection, the opportunity to learn from the failure and drive a culture of quality preventative maintenance is also thrown out.

Many businesses want to improve their maintenance performance but are unsure where to start and how to ensure the effort continues. The first step is to review the business performance against the strategic asset management model. Most maintenance audits and evaluations will do this step and provide the necessary ownership of the actions, however, the implementation of the actions is more[...]

It is quite common in mining and resource industries to include a reliability engineering function as part of the maintenance team. Bluefield has, over the past several years, assisted clients to get the most from this function. Our approach to enabling the reliability teams to be effective and obtain sustainable improvements is based on practical experience.

One of the greatest mistakes that are often made when companies are developing equipment maintenance strategies is to create far too many maintenance plans for the system to be practical and manageable for the planning resources. Bluefield has recently created life cycle strategies for several pieces of mining equipment which were built in a manner that would allow them to be practically[...]

Our client, the owner of a fleet of 789 trucks, asked Bluefield to provide a service to monitor the VIMS data from their 789 truck fleet.