Mechanical Technology — May 2013
19
⎪
Proactive maintenance, lubrication and contamination management
⎪
T
he Multotec Group is making
steady progress with the imple-
mentation of a maintenance
contract awarded to the com-
pany that covers Debswana’s Jwaneng
mine, OLM Process Plants, Orapa No 1
and No 2 plants, Letlhakane Mine treat-
ment plant and Damtshaa mine. Once
fully in place, this contract promises
to mitigate production delays, reduce
costs, decrease ferrosilicon losses and
increase efficiency across the board.
“Diminishing skills, coupled with an
increased focus on specialised products,
have led to a definite trend in the mining
industry towards maintenance con-
tracts,” says Derrick Alston, managing
director of Multotec Manufacturing. “It
makes perfect financial and operational
sense to optimise maintenance staff
on a process plant and enable mine
personnel to focus on the management
of the mining operation.
“Multotec’s maintenance contract at
Debswana is different from the norm,
however, owing to the remoteness of
Multotec’s Debswana maintenance contract
its operations. Each of the plants must
be overseen by maintenance crews
with the necessary skills and expertise
to conduct maintenance on a variety
of equipment such as wear linings,
screen panels, rubber scrubber liners,
dense medium and hydrocyclones,”
Alston adds.
The maintenance contract has been
designed on a fixed cost basis with an
additional cent per ton variable por-
tion, dependent on the tonnages being
processed. Multotec will maintain a
stockholding of consumables on each
site, eliminating the need for the mine
to hold stock and resulting in an overall
cost per ton reduction.
Multotec maintenance crews are
now permanently deployed on each
mine undertaking daily inspections of
all equipment related to the contract.
These daily checks are carried out in
conjunction with the use of the Hawk-
eye monitoring program that allows the
crews to accurately monitor the condi-
tion of equipment. For example, screen
panel change-out can be predicted and
dovetailed into pre-planned shutdowns
to optimise the use of the process plant.
Hawkeye was developed in-house by
Multotec to effectively monitor main-
tenance processes. It is a web-based
application, accessible anywhere in the
world, providing a simple interface for
the user to access accurate and efficient
records of maintenance activities. These
entries are stored in a database and
can be called up as required to identify
actual equipment status.
q
Hawkeye is a web-based application that provides
the user access to accurate and efficient records of
maintenance activities.
