The Challenge
¿How can we significantly reduce planned (PL) and unplanned (NP) downtime in the Fine Crushing and Agglomeration Plants without compromising system reliability?
Downtime in this area represents one of the main sources of operational availability losses. The challenge is not just to reduce downtime, but to improve it: anticipating failures, optimizing maintenance windows, and ensuring effective coverage of critical failure modes.
Our Solution
The solution is based on the comprehensive optimization of the maintenance strategy for the Fine Crushing and Agglomeration Plants, focused on reducing planned (PL) and unplanned (NP) downtime through reliability-based asset management.
The area’s downtime strategy was redesigned, prioritizing more efficient interventions that are better synchronized and aligned with the actual behavior of the assets.
Key Impact
- This structural change resulted in a reduction of approximately 27% in downtime hours, decreasing unnecessary shutdowns and improving the use of maintenance windows.
- The optimized strategy incorporated a detailed failure mode analysis, expanding coverage to a total of 827 failure modes.
- Eighty-two new, previously uncovered failure modes were added, strengthening the capacity for early detection and mitigation, which contributed up to an additional 3% reduction in downtime.
- The solution integrates reliability-centered maintenance (RCM) principles, ensuring that each task has a direct impact on reducing operational risk.
- This allowed for anticipating critical failures, reducing unforeseen events, and raising the standard of operational reliability.