Nine years, four commodities, one operating model

The situation

A mining group running multiple commodities cannot maintain its assets well by letting each site invent its own way of working. Each site plans, codes and reports its own way. Comparing performance across operations becomes guesswork, moving a planner between them means retraining, and the consolidated maintenance number is one nobody trusts.

The group set out to standardise work management as part of a group operating model, and to land it in SAP across every business. Standardising the process is the easy half. Landing it in the system, in the master data, and in the daily behaviour of several thousand people is where these programmes usually stall.

What we did

• Started with a pilot. The first twelve months ran at one complex in the platinum business, where a process and systems training programme was built and proven before anything scaled.
• Designed the operating model and the training that carries it. We co-authored the group’s work management and operating model training programme and the Platinum EAM training strategy, so the same words meant the same thing at every operation.
• Rolled out across the group. Plant maintenance process and systems training deployed across sites in coal, iron ore, platinum and diamonds, in South Africa, Botswana and Australia.
• Built the planning offices. The point was never the training. It was competent planning offices and maintenance procedures that hold once the consultants leave.
• Went deep on master data. EAM master data build, cleansing and governance, because functional locations, equipment records, task lists and bills of material decide whether the system produces work anyone trusts.
• Assured the go-lives. Role-based training, competence assessment and go-live assurance on each deployment.

The outcomes