A North American mining operation relied on 15 critical mobile units to sustain 24/7 production. With a target availability of 80%, at least 12 units needed to always be operational to meet production requirements.
However, actual availability averaged just 72%, leading to daily revenue losses of up to $70,250. The primary issue was not immediately clear:
Maintenance teams struggled with reactive work, causing frequent unplanned downtime.
Procurement teams faced delays in sourcing parts, often waiting weeks due to last-minute requests.
No structured downtime tracking system existed, making it impossible to analyze trends and optimize workflows.
By implementing TerraTraax, the mine gained structured downtime tracking and in-depth maintenance process analytics, helping both teams collaborate on solutions. The result? A 24% increase in planned maintenance work and a 31% reduction in waiting-on-parts delays.
Equipment Downtime Was Costing the Mine Over $70K Per Day
Each hour of unplanned downtime cost $3,995 per unit.
With below-target availability (72%), the mine lost an estimated $70,250 per day in production revenue.
Maintenance Teams Were Reacting Instead of Planning
High levels of unplanned work made it difficult to schedule preventive maintenance.
Maintenance teams had no easy way to quantify delays, making it difficult to justify process improvements.
Manual Excel tracking slowed decision-making and failed to identify recurring breakdown patterns.
Procurement Couldn’t Anticipate Spare Part Needs
Teams lacked visibility into upcoming maintenance requirements, leading to last-minute stockouts.
Emergency repairs frequently overloaded procurement with urgent part requests.
Procurement lacked clear insight into which asset types had the highest parts demand.
Parts ordering was based on emergency demands, not strategic inventory management.
The result?
Siloed teams, reactive operations, and significant production losses.
To solve these challenges, the mine deployed TerraTraax, a fleet downtime tracking and analytics platform designed for mining operations.
Structured Downtime Tracking for Maintenance Teams
Manual downtime entry ensured complete, structured event logging, including work status and failure modes.
TerraTraax captured all required information for deep analysis of maintenance delays, process inefficiencies, and repair trends.
Automated KPI Reporting
Key performance indicators (KPIs) such as Availability, Mean Time Between Failures (MTBF), and Mean Time to Repair (MTTR) were calculated automatically.
Maintenance teams could easily track recurring failure modes and downtime trends, driving better process optimization.
Identifying Asset Types with High Parts Demand
Procurement teams used TerraTraax data to pinpoint which asset types experienced the most downtime due to missing parts.
Armed with this insight, procurement conducted min/max analyses to optimize inventory levels and worked with suppliers to reduce lead times on critical parts.
Aligning Maintenance & Procurement for Operational Synergy
Maintenance teams shifted from reactive to planned work, giving procurement a clearer view of upcoming part needs.
Procurement teams adjusted stock levels and supplier contracts based on data-driven asset demand insights.
TerraTraax enabled failure mode tracking, helping maintenance teams identify recurring breakdown patterns.
The mine hired a reliability team to use this data to reduce equipment failures over time.
While overall availability did not improve immediately, teams gained the insights needed to drive long-term reliability improvements.
