| Previous Assignments |
 |
Maintenance Project Listing
-
Maintenance efficiency development
We were contracted to study and develop the effectiveness of the maintenance organisation of a large open cast coal mine, with special emphasis on the results of the maintenance information system. Several successes were achieved, including the development of a proper maintenance policy, the establishment of an integrated maintenance performance measurement process, a change from operating style management to systems driven management and a general improvement in the level of maintenance operation.
Contact person: Mr C.J. (Neels) Esterhuizen
Mine Manager
Sigma Colliery
Sasol Coal
Sasolburg
Telephone: (016) 970 6111
- Replacement study/ maintenance plan –
Basic Oxygen Furnaces, Iscor, Vanderbijlpark Works
The maintenance costs and downtime of the three Basic Oxygen Furnaces at Iscor’s Vanderbijlpark Works were running at very high and production-costly levels. The obvious solution was to replace the units with ones of improved design. Due to the high cost of such a capital replacement, we were contracted to do failure and capital replacement studies to determine the best technical and cost efficient route. The end result was that the units’ outer shells were replaced and that there was a better understanding of the mechanism of failure.
Contact person: Mr R. (Roald) Rodseth
Managing Director
Radiant Operations International
Telephone: (082) 650 1910 - Statistical Analysis of generation unit
outages at Eskom’s Arnot power station
The Arnot power station near Middelburg is the oldest of Eskom’s large 3600 MW power stations, consisting of 6 generation units (boiler/turbine/generator set units) of 600 MW each. The power station is busy revamping and upgrading these units to ensure that a satisfactory level of continued production capacity could be sustained. As the capital cost involved is very high, a statistical analysis of the unit’s production capacity and outages were performed with the purpose of developing a proper maintenance /replacement strategy.
Contact person: Mr H.A. (Hendrik) Grobbelaar
Eskom
Arnot Power station
Middelburg
Telephone: (013) 97 9868 - Development of a Capital Replacement
System for De Beers
The De Beers mines have mobile capital assets running into thousands of millions of Rands. Many of these machines are fairly old and costly to maintain. The group had no consistent capital replacement strategy for optimising their equipment maintenance and replacement. We were tasked with the proposal of a proper approach to the problem, followed by the development of an Excel based capital replacement system.
Contact person: Mr G. (Gerhard) Breytenbach
De Beers
Johannesburg
Telephone: (011) 374 7346 - Maintenance Policy – Iscor Mining
The Iscor mines recognised the need for developing and formalising a proper maintenance policy. We were requested to facilitate the process and write the policy document. This took on the format of group work sessions, individual consultations, and group approval sessions and led to a well thought through maintenance policy, which is accepted and implemented by all the mines in the group.
Contact person: Mr P.J. (Pieter) le Roux
Manager: Maintenance Engineering (at the time)
Iscor Mining Headquarters
Pretoria
Telephone: (082) 650 0066
- Pusher Car replacement study
The management of Silicon Technologies (Pty) Ltd felt they could not live with the high maintenance cost of the pusher cars they were using at their silicon ovens. M-Tech did a replacement study, disproving the present replacement of these cars, pending the availability of more maintenance cost data.
- Maintenance Policy – Reumech Ltd
Reumech is a company that evolved from the capacities created through Armscor contracts. They are busy developing new commercial business ventures comprising a variety of specialised vehicles. They were in dire need of a proper policy for the maintenance support of their marketing strategy. M-Tech facilitated the development of such policy.
- Maintenance System Installation
Brandspruit Colliery is one of the mines of the Secunda mines complex. They bought and installed a computerised maintenance information system, which did not perform well at all. M-Tech was commissioned to assist in the effective installation of the system. The work performed included formalising many parts of the system such as developing condition monitoring strategies, maintenance documentation, fault diagnosis diagrams, maintenance procedures and performing Reliability Centred Maintenance analysis on all the critical production equipment.
Contact person : Mr F.J. (Frikkie) Viljoen
Twistdraai Colliery
Secunda
Telephone (017) 614 6000 - Maintenance System Project Definition –
Secunda Mines
When the Secunda Mines complex contemplated the installation of a maintenance information system (and following our success at the Brandspruit Colliery), they appointed us to do the preliminary project definition work. This included a summary of business objectives, summary of business functions, summary of information needs, conceptual design, project data model, interface requirements, risk profile and installation work plan. This enabled the mines’ own project team in launching the project within known parameter boundaries.
- Maintenance System evaluation – Metro
Rail
Metro Rail was contemplating the purchase of a computerised maintenance information system. One of their areas was using a present system that was custom made for their business application. They thus needed a good and independent evaluation of the functional and technical suitability of the software. M-Tech was commissioned for this purpose and carried out a detailed evaluation of the software package.
Non-maintenance project listing
- Computerised production monitoring system
– Cape Gate
The design, project management and installation of a computerised production monitoring system at a large wire mill. This included the procurement of all hardware, the design and writing of all software and the final installation and testing of the system. The system supplies vital management information on a daily basis. This system was a pilot scale design study to investigate the possibility of automating the whole plant in a similar fashion. I worked extremely well and was followed by the full scale installation of a commercially available system.
- Simulation Study – Mineral Processes (Gencor)
A simulation study into the various options for the transport of ore on surface at a large mining complex. The complex consists of 13 mine shafts that are connected to a central ore beneficiation plant via a rail network. M-Tech was commissioned to do a simulation study to enable the management of the complex to do long term planning. Decisions that had to be taken during the planning process included shaft and additional plant location decisions as well as rail network design. The simulation work was done in a commercially available simulation language SLAM.
- Simulation System – Mineral Processes (Gencor)
The development of a custom built simulation to handle the above-mentioned problem. The system is fully commercialised and can handle any similar simulation problem. The simulation process is handled using 13 multifaceted matrices and 2 history files. Customised reports are available for each simulation run to facilitate comparisons between different rail configurations.
- Simulation System – Elandsrand Gold Mine
The development of a simulation system to simulate the transport of ore in a deep underground gold mine. The mine group, for whom the system was developed, had to take decisions concerning the possibility of deeper mining activity without sinking new shafts. This has the effect of increasing the load on the transport system, which had to be investigated.
- Heat pump studies – National Energy
Council
Two projects relating to the use of heat pumps as viable alternative for resistance and other type of heating. One of these comprises a market survey and techno-economical evaluation of heat pumps as an alternative heating method, while the other is a study of the effect of heat pumps on domestic power consumption. These projects were undertaken for the National Energy Council.
- Long Term Capital Study – Liebenberg, Jenkins and Partners
The civil engineering consulting firm, Liebenberg, Jenkins and Partners, was involved in major pump station and water reticulation designs (Lesotho Highlands Project), but needed the ability to forecast the long term capital flows of different design alternatives. M-Tech was commissioned to develop custom made algorithms and computer spreadsheet solutions for the application.