Operational excellence
Rio Tinto Coal Australia is focused on continuous improvement in every respect. When it comes to business improvements, we are focused on the key areas of our business, including marketing, asset management, coal mining and processing.
Our approach
Collaboration is a key focus of business improvement at Rio Tinto Coal Australia. By establishing common systems, solving common issues and sharing knowledge and experience across all Rio Tinto Coal Australia sites and the wider Rio Tinto Group, the business is able to improve efficiency and create additional value.
Results
Excellent business improvement results were delivered across all of Rio Tinto Coal Australia's operations in 2008, despite the external impacts of the downturn in the economic environment in the latter half of the year.
Business improvement programmes created $655 million in value throughout the year.
These included:
- Significant contributions from the Marketing and Coal Chain teams which contributed $185.6 million and $165.8 million respectively in revenue increase opportunities
- The creation of $47.6 million in value through Rio Tinto’s Improving Performance Together (IPT) marketing initiatives. These included opportunities to optimise sales through product mix, minimising costs to market and risk management
- Optimising the mix of semi-soft and thermal export coals to create a significant proportion ($164.4 million) of the marketing / coal chain / sites revenue increase
- Of the $52.8 million in Cost Saving Projects, $9.2 million was generated through payload optimisation projects across a number of sites including Hail Creek Mine in Queensland and Mount Thorley Warkworth, Hunter Valley Operations and Bengalla in New South Wales
- Bengalla delivered $21 million in business improvements. The solution to one of the defect elimination projects involving data link errors on the EH4500 electric drive dump trucks generated Bengalla more than $400,000 in improvements and solved this issue for all EH4500s. The use of dispatch to assist with increasing effective utilisation also contributed significantly to Bengalla’s total ($1.9 million)
- Blair Athol Mine delivered improvements of $23.1 million. Part of this value was delivered by a project which introduced a hydroscreen plant to improve coal recovery
- Coal handling and preparation plant (CHPP) improvement projects at Hail Creek Mine delivered more than $52 million of the $78.2 million in improvements for the site. These projects included tuning control loops, controlling dense medium cyclone feed and improving the accuracy and stability of density control, all resulting in a more efficient process, that processed more coal in less time. Further gains in productivity were obtained at Hail Creek Mine through using “Lean” tools
- Hunter Valley Operations delivered a total of $124.2 million of improvements of which a significant proportion was attributable to optimising semi-soft and thermal export coal. Yield improvements at the CHPP ($16.5 million), IPT-sponsored use of oil analysis to prevent failures ($4.3 million) and truck payload optimisation ($4.9 million) also delivered significant value to the site
- An increase in longwall productivity with the use of a support crew added $13.5 million in value at Kestrel Mine. While projects related to the “Kestrel Blitz”, a collaborative programme led by Coal Processing Improvement contributed approximately one third ($10.9 million) to Kestrel Mine’s $32.1 million total
- Mount Thorley Warkworth was able to achieve $24.6 million in value through a combination of productivity and efficiency projects. The best performing cost-saving project was truck payload optimisation which returned $2.4 million in value
- Improvements being delivered at site are supported by the processing, mining, dragline and assets teams in Brisbane. Business improvement tools such as Lean and 6 Sigma are being used to solve problems and improve our operations.
Read about how Rio Tinto Coal Australia is producing more coal with more efficiency in our feature story on sustainable yields.
