Blown up big rocks get crushed into smaller rocks, which get fed into a Grinding Mill. The micro rocks slip through a screen as slurry and head downstream. The stubborn little rocks bounce off the screen and onto a recirc conveyor, heading back into the Mill Feed for another round with steel balls and a high rate of hard rock feed stock.
We were mine constrained, so anything the mine could supply, the mill gratefully accepted.
Two conveyors. Two stop/start stations; side by side. One controlled the recirc, no drama if it stopped. The other controlled the Mill Feed and restarting that took time, effort, and patience. All in all, it was a 15 minute restart process and the disruption caused issues downstream.
Operators often shut down the wrong conveyor. Naturally, they blamed the maintainers because the control panel labels were a faded mess of old marker pens. A job existed to re‑label them… but it sat at the bottom of the pile. There was always something “more urgent”.
Enter my mate, another BI Damain, who pulled the data, grabbed two packets of Tim Tams, and walked into the maintenance crib room.
The team lit up. Chocolate biscuits appearing out of nowhere will do that.
“Not yet,” he said. “The accidental mill trips have cost us over $150k in the last 18 months. Operators are tired of asking for new labels. You get one packet now. I’ll be back at lunch. If the control panels are relabelled, you get the other.” He dropped the first packet and walked out.
Three hours later, he returned to view photo evidence of beautifully relabelled control panels. The label maker had been fired up. The station looked Mickey Mouse. They earned their second packet, along with a reminder about the unseen cost of deprioritising those small jobs.
That Damo was an outside the box thinker and my mentor. Nearly a decade later, I flew into site with 15kg of Tim Tams because I had a plan, a timeline, and 400 operators and maintainers to bring onside. Worked a treat… literally 😉
Getting things done doesn’t always need stress, committees, or a 40 page business case. Sometimes a defined problem, sweetened with chocolate coated biscuits, influences outcomes just fine.
Key takeaway: Small frustrations create big losses. Fixing them doesn’t always require complexity… just creativity. If your organisation wrestles with “small problems causing big pain”, Growth Improvements can help you turn them around,with or without the Tim Tams.