Work it Hard or Shut it Down

Experience shows that work has a tendency to expand to the time available. This can drive up load and haul costs – some thoughts from the field.

Overview

You should think of a piece of equipment as a bank account that you write cheques against each time you run it. For example, if you start with say an engine that has a rebuild value of $200k, every hour you run that engine, you run that $200k account down until its value is nil and you replace or rebuild it.

The key to the lowest cost operation is to reduce the number of ‘cheques’ you write against the machine. In essence, what you want to ensure is that the machine is working hard (which is the same as saying productively) or not at all. There are three factors that impact this:

• Unproductive running.
• Busy work.
• Excessive idling.

Unproductive running

The first issue you come across is unproductive running. This can be caused by a range of factors including poor equipment matching, lack of operator training and job conditions.

But the one to really look for, is this issue of ‘the work expands to the time available‘. If the crew know that they have to get ‘x’ tonnes out in a shift, then they tend to work at that pace, not at what the equipment or system is capable of.

And so the work fits the time available unless management are able to understand what the equipment is capable of and enforce its productive use.

Busy work

In my time as an operator (and supervisor), the number one way to get into trouble was to be stopped. You were better off to appear busy doing nothing useful than to be stopped. Work that is done to appear busy even when you are not is called ‘busy work’.

Don’t encourage busy work. Make sure the operators know to stop work if there is nothing useful for them to do (and tell you that that is what they are doing). Don’t berate them, find them something productive to do.

Excessive idling

Excessive idling comes about in many ways. Machines left idling on the go-line (sometimes all morning). Machines left idling to run the air-conditioner or heater through lunch breaks. Machines left idling when there is a break in production.

Machines can spend a LOT of time idling (as evidenced by either machine reports or low fuel consumption).

It is easy to think this is no big deal – the reality is different.

Firstly, the resale value of the machine will be impacted. All other things being equal, the machine with 10,000 hrs on the clock is going to have a better resale value than the one with 12,000 hrs.

Likewise, regular servicing is driven by the hour meter. Doesn’t matter if the hours were run up idling or not, the servicing will be done regardless and your costs go up.

If your machines are spending 20% of the time idling, you are not only losing the productivity of them, but you are driving down the resale value and increasing the amount of servicing that needs to be done.

Action Item(s)

1. Ensure operators know that the machine is to be worked to capacity or shutdown
2. Be vigilant for ‘busy work’ and have supervisors prevent it.
3. Pay attention to idle reports and fuel burn reports to identify excessive idling and correct it.

Summary

Where machines are concerned, run them hard or shut them down. Idling along and appearing to be working might make everyone feel better, but it sure costs a lot of money.

Know what your fleet is capable of and get the crew to achieve it. Reward them for good behavior rather than tacitly rewarding them for bad behaviour by letting them get away with excessive idling, busy work and slow running.

This is part of an ongoing series of posts on the fundamentals of Load & Haul. If you like this post, please take the time to check out others in the series.