Introduction
Many companies operating in highly competitive landscapes not only in domestic but also in foreign markets constantly seek to reduce the costs of their business activities. In this regard, maintenance and reliability management constitute a significant part of the company’s expenses. For instance, the administration and maintenance of mining machinery account for 30-50 percent of overall expenses (Implementing Effective Maintenance, 2020).
Therefore, managers constantly seek effective methods to keep equipment operational. However, the practices that may ensure successful actions in achieving the aforementioned goal may vary due to internal and external factors. The latter includes but is not limited to geographical, climate, political and geological conditions.
Canada consists of ten provinces and three territories, and each jurisdiction has its own mining industry that operates under unique conditions. Nevertheless, two regions, namely Northwest Territories (NT) and Nunavut (NU), are especially distinct from other lands as they both are located in the northern part of the country and lack automobile and railway roads. For that reason, it is necessary to discuss how the professional practices of mechanical maintenance engineers would differ in the latter jurisdictions in comparison with other provinces.
Cold Weather and Equipment Failure Preventive Methods
First of all, the professionals would need to plan maintenance differently in NT and NU than in most of the other provinces and territories. That may happen due to the number of cold days in the year that exceeds those in other regions. Additionally, the average temperature is also significantly lower than in other places. NU is considered the coldest jurisdiction in the country, whereas NT is located in the third place after Yukon (Simpson, 2020).
In this regard, Ivanov et al. (2019) found that the weather condition that differs from the nominal level has the worst impact on the equipment longevity. Therefore, in such circumstances, maintenance engineers would need to become aware of the equipment failure preventive methods that would address NT’s and NU’s extremely low temperatures. It may include fuel gelling or direct fuel warming in order to prevent the latter from freezing (Scales, 2017). Moreover, it may also contain actions to ensure that machinery batteries are kept in warmth as cold is negatively associated with the energy source’s working period.
Cold Weather and Mean Time Between Failures
Additionally, the professionals would need to start reassessing the mean time between failures. In order to achieve that, they should be able to count the equipment longevity period under new circumstances that are usually not mentioned in the manual and should be evaluated considering the weather specifics. As a result, adapted calculations would be used for the budget planning and management of spare parts reserves in order to ensure the company’s most effective operations.
Remote Location and the Necessity of Developing the New Routes
Finally, the remote location of the mining works and lack of automobile and railway roads would necessitate mechanical maintenance engineers to consider new logistic routes. In that case, for NU and NT, the fastest possibility to acquire certain parts for equipment repair may be based on the usage of the sea or air shipping rather than land transport. Additionally, that can also significantly affect the choice of the suppliers based on their location (i.e., close to the seaport).
Conclusion
In summary, it was discussed how professional practices of mechanical maintenance engineers would differ in NU and NT compared to other jurisdictions. It was hypothesized that the biggest distinctions between functions in regions would be determined by weather conditions and the availability of the roads. On the one hand, low temperatures that last for many days during the year would make maintenance engineers reconsider preventive methods and reassess the mean time between failures. On the other hand, the lack of in-land roads would force the professionals to consider new spare parts supply routes, which will not be dependent heavily on ground transportation.
References
Implementing effective maintenance strategies for long term production goals. (2020). Mining.
Ivanov, S. L., Ivanova, P. V., & Kuvshinkin, S. U. (2019). Weather conditions as a factor affecting the performance of modern powerful mining excavators. Journal of Physics: Conference Series, 1399(4), 1 – 5.
Scales, M. (2017). Cold weather maintenance cuts costs and downtime. Canadian Mining Journal.
Simpson, V. (2020). Coldest provinces/territories in Canada. World Atlas.