The mining industry, characterized by its reliance on heavy equipment with unique requirements, approaches maintenance differently than other industries. Along with the specific nature of the machinery, additional challenges such as harsh environments and remote locations come into play. To minimize costly production downtimes, mining companies must optimize maintenance strategies. Leveraging a Computerized Maintenance Management System (CMMS) is essential for reliable, safe, and cost-effective industrial maintenance.
The unique challenges of the mining industry
For mining companies, maintenance presents a complex challenge. The industry relies on oversized equipment operating under often extreme conditions. Safety and cost management are among the top priorities for mining companies, which face significant constraints:
Extreme operating conditions
Mining sites are harsh environments marked by vibrations, dust, humidity, and extreme temperatures. These conditions accelerate wear and tear on massive mining equipment such as drills, loaders, and haul trucks, necessitating frequent industrial maintenance.
Remote locations and difficult access
Many mining sites are located in remote, hard-to-reach areas. This isolation complicates the delivery of spare parts and technician interventions, requiring self-sufficient operations supported by accurately assessed stock inventories.
Size of equipment and downtime costs
Heavy equipment handles substantial workloads, meaning every hour of production downtime translates to significant financial losses. Maintenance shutdowns, therefore, require meticulous planning and precision execution by operators.
Critical safety requirements
Working on mining equipment—often classified as Seveso (high-risk industrial activities)—poses additional risks for technicians. From elevated operations to furnace maintenance and periodic inspections of handling equipment, safety is paramount. Enhancing safety often involves increasing preventive maintenance measures.
Strategies to minimize production downtime
Anticipation is the cornerstone of the mining sector, where operations must often be planned with extreme precision to accommodate industrial maintenance. Several strategies help achieve this goal:
Deploying large teams of technicians in minimal time
To reduce downtime, maintenance teams are often sizeable. This allows tasks to be completed faster but also demands precise planning and pre-arranged availability. A significant number of work orders must be issued and meticulously tracked.
Maintaining spare parts inventory on-site
Managing spare parts logistics requires exceptional precision. Large quantities of critical components are kept on-site to enable rapid repairs—both scheduled and unforeseen.
Increasing preventive and predictive maintenance
Preventive and predictive maintenance are the mining sector’s main tools for addressing its need for anticipation. By continuously monitoring stock levels and machine conditions, companies can better manage their needs and consolidate operations into a single production halt. Analyzing performance indicators and potential failures is crucial for mining operations.
Anticipating maintenance cycles
Preparing for industrial maintenance cycles is a continuous process. Mining professionals start planning for the next shutdown as soon as the previous one concludes, always aiming for improvement. Analyzing past errors and projecting future needs are essential steps in effective planning.
The role of CMMS in addressing mining sector challenges
Given the demand for precision, human oversight alone is insufficient. To comprehensively manage all relevant information, the mining industry increasingly relies on CMMS solutions, utilizing their advanced features.
A CMMS provides mining companies with advantages such as:
- Centralizing equipment and maintenance data
- Meticulous planning of preventive maintenance tasks
- Optimized management of spare parts inventories
- Analysis of maintenance costs and downtime
- Generation of regulatory compliance reports
- Sharing technical information about equipment
Modern CMMS platforms are tailored to the mining sector, offering features like multi-site and multi-organization management, simplified asset allocation, and integration of innovations such as IoT for condition-based maintenance.
Using a CMMS, mining companies can address key aspects of their maintenance needs:
- Mapping critical workflows: Maintenance software provides detailed equipment analysis to optimize operations, anticipate work orders, and eliminate oversights that could extend production downtimes.
- Planning workloads: Integrated CMMS scheduling and stock management ensure smooth coordination of operators and machinery, facilitating efficient interventions on critical days.
- Effective communication: Sharing information, both on-site and remotely, is crucial for successful industrial maintenance. Transparent sharing of documents, blueprints, and intervention histories enhances the maintenance process.
- Analyzing needs: Dashboards, reports, and key performance indicators provide the precision required to understand equipment details comprehensively.
- Ensuring safety: From automatically generating regulatory compliance reports to adhering to protocols during industrial maintenance, a CMMS supports companies in safeguarding their workforce.
Case study – The ORTEC group
Like many mining companies, ORTEC Services faced a significant need for coordination in its practices. The group chose to deploy the DimoMaint MX solution across 30 of its agencies, primarily in the energy, nuclear, and mining sectors. The goal was to standardize best practices across the organization while saving time and increasing efficiency.
Multi-site maintenance was a central challenge, as each agency had previously managed its own industrial maintenance organization using its own standards. Implementing a CMMS aimed to provide autonomy for individual sites while centralizing data.
Beyond simply scheduling interventions, the CMMS allows ORTEC Services to centralize technical data on its equipment, enhance preventive maintenance, and handle parts procurement with precision. The maintenance software integrates with the company’s ERP system to deliver detailed analytics, enabling grouped interventions and seamless maintenance orchestration.
For ORTEC and other mining stakeholders, a robust CMMS is indispensable. A well-configured and efficient software system facilitates proactive maintenance, ensuring that even large-scale projects are no longer a barrier to operational success.
