Successful Implementation Case of the Lean Management System at Ministro Hales Division, Codelco

摘要

Achieving an increase of 10.3 % in mineral treatment in a 6-month term is not trivial, even more so when the mining industry has been impacted by a series of factors that include decreased price of copper, lesser mineral grades, higher cost to access new deposits and decreased productivity. Codelco's Ministro Hales Division encompasses the processes of mine, concentrator and roaster. Due to the high level of arsenic in the mineral of origin, a roaster process is necessary to extract it, transforming the mineral into calcine, a highly pure concentrate with elevated percentages of copper and silver. Ministro Hales Division is not exempt from the mining industry's problem, which is why it faces the challenge to streamline its processes, making the operation more productive through a culture of change and continuous improvement. There are several continuous improvement methodologies in the industry, Codelco decided to implement the lean management, called C+ in Codelco. The implementation of C+ began with a bottleneck analysis, which identified the roaster complex as the process with the largest opportunities to increase performance. The established base line for this process refers to three key indicators: availability (81 %); usage (92 %); yield (78.9 %) and treatment (1.405 tms/day). After six months of direct work with the line of command, the process has improved and the following are the indicators as of November 2016: availability (86 %); usage (98 %); yield (79.1 %) and treatment (1.552 tms/day). Beyond the impact indicators, a cultural transformation has begun and it is proven in the way we do things, understanding change as an opportunity to improve processes and working methodology, with success based in operational discipline.