Downtime analysis of drilling machines and suggestions for improvements
Journal of Quality in Maintenance Engineering
ISSN: 1355-2511
Article publication date: 7 October 2014
Abstract
Purpose
The purpose of this paper is to analyse and compare the downtime of four drilling machines used in two underground mines in Sweden. The downtime of these machines was compared to show what problems affect downtime and which strategies should be applied to reduce it.
Design/methodology/approach
The study collects failure data from a two-year period for four drilling machines and performs reliability analysis. It also performs downtime analysis utilising a log-log diagram with a confidence interval.
Findings
There are notable differences in the downtime of most of the studied components for all machines. The hoses and feeder have relatively high downtime. Depending on their downtime, the significant components can be ranked in three groups. The downtime of the studied components is due to reliability problems. The study suggests the need to improve the reliability of critical components to reduce the downtime of drilling machines.
Originality/value
The method of analysing the downtime, identifying dominant factors and the interval estimation for the downtime, has never been studied on drilling machines. The research proposed in this paper provides a general method to link downtime analysis with potential component improvement. To increase the statistical accuracy; four case studies was performed in two different mines with completely different working environment and ore properties. Using the above method showed which components need to be improved and suggestions for improvement was proposed and will be implemented accordingly.
Keywords
Acknowledgements
© Hussan S. Al-Chalabi, Jan Lundberg, Andi Wijaya and Behzad Ghodrati. Boliden AB is gratefully acknowledged for their financial support. Published by Emerald Group Publishing Limited. This paper is published under the Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY 3.0) licence. Anyone may reproduce, distribute, translate and create derivative works of this paper (for both commercial and non-commercial purposes), subject to full attribution to the original publication and authors. The full terms of this licence may be seen at http://creativecommons.org/licences/by/3.0/legalcode
Boliden AB is gratefully acknowledged for their financial support. The maintenance personnel and maintenance management system employees at Boliden AB who helped the authors in this research are also thanked for their support.
Citation
S. Al-Chalabi, H., Lundberg, J., Wijaya, A. and Ghodrati, B. (2014), "Downtime analysis of drilling machines and suggestions for improvements", Journal of Quality in Maintenance Engineering, Vol. 20 No. 4, pp. 306-332. https://doi.org/10.1108/JQME-11-2012-0038
Publisher
:Emerald Group Publishing Limited
Copyright © 2014, Authors