Our guest today, Christian Darby, is an exceptional leader in the maintenance industry. He joins us today to talk about the learnings from his 30 plus years in the mining industry, and how he attributes the success of his fleet to the way he treats his people. Christian is a highly experienced and qualified Maintenance Specialist, with years of experience working in various roles within Australia and around the world. As an inclusive leader and manager, he has a proven record of exceeding performance goals and creating a holistic, sustainable workshop safety culture.In this episode, Christian talks about the importance of taking ownership of the machines he is working on to improve fleet reliability and asset performance. He shares some of the best and worst experiences he’s had over the years and his approach to improving work executive quality.We talk about why developing an asset management plan is one of the most important factors in rectifying a reactive workshop and how this flows into every area of the site, instilling clarity and focus. Christian also shares his advice for aspiring maintenance managers, which is to focus on the people. If you treat people well and give your trust freely, the people will buy in and the overall performance of the fleet will improve. LINKS:Website: https://www.bluefield.com.au/en/ (https://www.bluefield.com.au/en/)Christian LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/christian-darby-28635727/?originalSubdomain=au (https://www.linkedin.com/in/christian-darby-28635727/?originalSubdomain=au)

Our guest today has been at the forefront of operational reliability improvement in various industries around the world for many years. Dick Pettigrew joins us today, sharing from his extensive experience as we discuss his integrated approach to design, maintenance and operations.

 

With a degree in Chemical Engineering and a love for machinery, Dick started out working in process engineering support. As he progressed into design and project management, Dick began to observe fundamental issues surrounding the approach to reliability improvement and maintenance operations. In this episode, Dick shares about his career journey, some of the major learnings of his experience thus far and his holistic approach to problem solving on site, not just within maintenance reliability.

 

We discuss how output improvement is more valuable than maintenance cost reductions, how there’s a difference between the problem and the cause and that taking a broadened approach from reliability improvement into total manufacturing improvement is what will create sustainable improvements.

 

Dick talks us through some of his experiences improving outcomes and how the assessment process itself isn’t as important as the commitment from the leadership team and people on site to implement the improvements. We discuss the importance of establishing a good culture and how working with people directly on the floor brings the plant up to standard and restores pride in the operation.

 

Dick has spent a lot of time creating measurement systems and writing books to take a systematic approach to output improvement. He discusses his asset utilisation model and how combining this with the theory of constraints enabled him to improve the output of many plants he’s been involved in.

 

We discuss using RCM not as a project but as a way of thinking about plant reliability and how it can make a real difference when utilised this way. Dick shares his advice to aspiring maintenance and operational managers, honing in on the vital component of the human aspect.

Our guest today, Steve Flannery, has clocked up just over 30 years working primarily in the mining industry. Starting off as a plant mechanic apprentice to gain hands on experience, completing his mechanical engineering degree and working in numerous large corporations, Steve has vast experience in asset management with a focus on work quality.

Steve’s current role is in Asset Management Services as Manager of Eastern Region (NSW/Vic/NZ) at Bluefield. In this episode, Steve shares his journey in the industry and how having a trade background makes a big difference with people on the ground, understanding the challenges of the job and how to find positive solutions.

Steve shares how good maintenance is all about having the right people doing the right work at the right time and that work quality and safety go hand in hand.  He recounts some incidents on site leading to injuries and how in his experience, incidents most commonly involve an asset, design or maintenance element.

When asked about his best outcome from assets, Steve shares about the challenge he faced in 2012 to cut his maintenance budget by 30%.  He was able to achieve this target in a sustainable way whilst maintaining fleet performance through strategy and good data. This experience taught Steve a lot and he discusses how he has learnt to focus on the work execution team to obtain the best results.

Steve recounts his worst experience as a maintenance manager and his most difficult time dealing with a GM and how he dealt with it. He also shares about his positive fix mentality and leaves us with his top pieces of advice for those looking to enter into the maintenance managers space.

 

LinkedIn: https://au.linkedin.com/in/stephen-flannery-5880ba14

Website: https://www.bluefield.com.au/en/

Our guest today is Dave Archinal, the South Australian Manager at Bluefield, and he shares from his wealth of knowledge and experience in the reliability and improvement arena.  Having worked in the industry for over 30 years, Dave has travelled the world working on different improvement programs across numerous industries and commodities.

In this episode, Dave talks about how he got started in the industry in a mechanical engineering cadetship and how he worked his way through supervisory and planner roles, eventually finding his niche in reliability and improvement.  Dave was encouraged to step up into a supervisory role at the young age of 19 and he shares some of the lessons he learned early on about the importance of asking the right questions, listening and enabling others to perform at their best.

As a young apprentice, David was never satisfied with simply completing transactions.  He felt the need to question how the system could be made easier, which led him into maintenance improvement initiatives and eventually into the consulting space.  David shares numerous experiences working with companies to improve their systems by asking the right questions and challenging the existing processes in place.

David shares his 3 golden nuggets for those looking to embark on a reliability improvement project and talks about the importance of taking the time to listen to the people around you.  You can have all the ideas in the world, but until you know what the problem is, you won’t find the solution.

 

LINKS:

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/davidarchinal/?originalSubdomain=au

Website: https://www.bluefield.com.au/en/ (https://www.bluefield.com.au/en/)

Book: The Knowing Doing Gap

This episode follows on from last week’s discussion with Richard Blayden as he talks about making change in a workplace by lifting people up to a common overall context.

Richard discusses what is required to make lasting change and shares examples of how he has helped implement such change through his process utilising organisational charts, focussing on relationship, understanding data and asking the right questions. Richard also shares his top 5 pieces of advice for those wanting to get excellent results from their assets.

Our guest today has quite a few more than 30 years experience under his belt. Recognised as the father of the pipeline model for understanding work management, Richard Blayden was the first to put together a detailed framework for operational readiness processes. His developments have become the standard reference point for many of us in the industry.

Starting out his career as a young apprentice, Richard went back to study engineering and progressed into project management. With a broad range of knowledge and depth of experience, he provides asset management and organisational performance improvement services to the mining industry and other industries.

In this episode, Richard shares from his years of experience and how and why he came to develop the pipeline model. Having been involved in maintenance and project management from early days, he found that a lot of issues on site were due to a lack of information, communication and poor data analysis. Richard discusses common issues on site and how the pipeline model helps to lift people up to a common goal rather than dwelling on their personal thoughts about a particular issue.

Richard discusses his involvement in the BHP maintenance evaluation in the early days and the three key issues that were discovered from that process. He shares his thoughts on why people aren’t good at data analysis, how a character string analysis identified an issue that was costing millions of dollars every year and how identifying and implementing the right process helped to fix it.

LINKS:

Website: https://www.bluefield.com.au/en/

A system is a tool that delivers on business processes to reach strategic goals.  A common mistake, however, is when businesses focus on the system instead of the outcome the system is intended to achieve.

Our guest today is Leigh Jameson, Senior Asset Management Specialist at Bluefield, and he shares from his wealth of knowledge regarding data analysis, systems and processes.  Beginning his career as a motor mechanic and moving into diesel fitting and numerous roles within the mining industry, Leigh’s vast experience has provided a unique perspective into how keeping systems simple lead to the best performance outcomes.

Throughout Leigh’s experience in the workplace, he discovered a passion for improving systems and asking the right questions to enable better outcomes and work quality.  Motivated by his desire to thoroughly investigate issues, Leigh spent nights reading and educating himself which eventually led him into the asset management space.

In this episode, Leigh shares his passion for systems improvement and how quality data underpinned by good business processes leads to work quality and positive outcomes on site.  He shares some of his positive and challenging experiences over the years and the lessons learned regarding the importance of simplifying systems.

A great system is only one aspect of achieving great results.  Leigh shares about the importance of developing a proactive culture on site where each person has a part to play.  When people are valued, motivated, and educated they can work together to look for areas of improvement and reduce administrative burden.

Linkedin: https://au.linkedin.com/in/leighjameson

Website: https://www.bluefield.com.au/en/

Building on our last episode with Relialytics’ senior analyst Angus Lay, we delve further into the $750,000 unexpected catastrophic engine failure resulting from analysis of post-filtration oil; oil with the red flags filtered out. This prompted a collaboration with Hastings to develop an in-house analysis of the filtration cake to find useful metrics of engine wear, contamination, dirt ingress etc and give critical insight into the problem which turned out to be fleet-wide. Part replacements and sensors for sensors quickly corrected the issue and an important lesson was learnt. Angus and Gerard talk through lesser-known engine issues and sensor misadventure which, although minute in isolation, can be catastrophic as they discuss.

LINKS: Angus Lay on LinkedinBluefield’s webRE (https://resources.bluefield.com.au/webre) service Relialytics Website (https://www.relialytics.com.au)

Collecting and analysing data in a reliable and efficient manner is crucial to obtaining good outcomes on site.  However, even the most in depth reporting and cutting edge systems are only as good as the people on the ground.  For a site to operate at its optimum, there must be trust and clear communication established from the ground up.

Our guest today is Angus Lay, Senior Analyst at Relialytics in Brisbane. Growing up on the bayside, Angus had a natural love for the water and started his career as a marine mechanic.  Working his way up through trade roles to service manager, he eventually  moved across into mining where he spent 15 years working in numerous roles including equipment health, conditional monitoring and oil analysis.

Angus talks through his current role at Relialytics and how they improve asset reliability through a different approach to analytics which alleviates the hours and money spent on manual data collection.  This enables people on site to spend more time working on the solution, which ultimately leads to better outcomes.

As a fourth year apprentice, Angus moved into a service manager role and he shares some experiences which led him to discover the importance of communicating down to the shop floor level, not just focusing on systems and great reporting.  Angus talks about the need for building trust with people on site and how receiving feedback from the team leads to better learning outcomes.

Technology is increasing rapidly, enabling better systems and reporting and whilst this provides great opportunity for reliability improvement, Angus reiterates the need for managers to bring their team on the journey to ensure they understand the processes and reasons behind the work they are doing.

LINKS:

Angus on Linkedin: https://au.linkedin.com/in/angus-lay-07087951

Relialytics: https://www.relialytics.com.au

There is an increasing awareness of the importance of building relationships with team mates and how this makes such a great impact on work ethic, efficiency and productivity in the workplace.

Our guest today has 47 years of experience in the workplace and, having worked in every role imaginable from shop floor to management positions, he has a depth of knowledge in the mining industry and the importance of taking care of his team.  Tom Houston was a guest on our podcast earlier this year and we have him back today to take a deeper dive into the skills he utilises to build genuine relationships and obtain great results on site.

Humans are very complex creatures, yet often it’s the simple things that make a big difference on our lives.  In this episode, Tom reiterates the importance of keeping things simple and being consistent and fair with the people around us.  When a culture of respect and trust flows from the top, it will naturally filter into all aspect of the company and produce excellent results.

For more resources and information, head to the Bluefield Asset Management website.

To learn more about getting the most out of your assets, grab a copy of Gerard’s book Simplifying Mining Maintenance.