Russian diamond miner Alrosa is gearing up the launch the ‘perfect shift’ project, aimed at improving performance and reducing downtime of the mining fleet at its Aikhal division.
The company explains that its Aikhal division has started to look into organisational changes required for the mine’s efficiency improvement initiatives back in late 2019. To adapt the ‘perfect shift’ to the Jubilee mine, Alrosa created an Aikhal production system development function.
“The perfect shift has been successfully piloted at Nyurba and Udachny divisions. Preliminary results showed higher performance and lower downtime of the mining fleet. Now, we need to change the mining and transportation processes and minimise unproductive time at Aikhal division,” says head of production system development functions at Aikhal, Artem Polyvyanny.
The ‘perfect shift’ at Aikhal will focus on pit stop, hotseat and flexible swing shift initiatives. Pit stop means that full maintenance, refuelling and inspection of the mining fleet between the shifts will take place at a fixed time and place. Hotseat means that a replacement driver will change the regular mine truck driver during his lunchtime. Flexible swing shift facilitates operational continuity.
These three initiatives are expected to improve the mine truck utilisation rate to above 81%.
A unified control centre has already been set up to cut the downtime of mine trucks waiting for loading. A service centre based on the mining equipment repair shop will be created to perform the maintenance of mine trucks and excavators during each shift.