Best-In-Class Maintenance Indices in Chilean Open-Pit Mines

Peter Knights(1) y P. Oyanader(2)

(1) Pontificia Universidad Catlica de Chile
(2) Invertec Ltda. Santiago - Chile
knights@ing.puc.cl

ABSTRACT.
In 2001 the Catholic University of Chile undertook a maintenance benchmarking
study of six open-pit copper mines having mill capacities varying between 18.000 tpd and
156.000 tpd and collectively responsible for 58% of Chilean copper production. This paper
describes the methodology used to conduct the study, as well as the overall results. Key
performance indices were selected to measure the effectiveness, efficiency and
development of the maintenance process. Using a balanced scorecard philosophy, these
indicators were divided into client satisfaction, financial, internal process, and learning and
growth indices.
Maintenance was found on average to be responsible for 44% of mine production
costs. Percentage planned maintenance of equipment fleets were found to be low by world
standards, averaging 35%, 56% and 44% respectively for blasthole drill, shovel and haul
truck fleets. Fleet availabilities were found to be significantly influenced by the percentage
of planned maintenance achieved, whilst maintenance cost per equipment was found to
decrease non-linearly with increases in percentage planned maintenance. Investment in
technical training (including planned maintenance practice) was found to be low by global
standards. The paper concludes that fleet availability and maintenance costs in Chilean
open-pit operations could be considerably improved by improving and/or developing
maintenance planning standards, and investing in training personnel in planned
maintenance techniques.

INTRODUCTION
In todays capital intensive mining industry, maintaining high equipment availability,
utilization, production and quality (or yield) rates is vital to the financial performance of
mining companies. Equipment maintenance and repair (referred to hereafter as
maintenance) play a vital role in assuring productive capacity and equipment capability.
Due to a lack of publicly available benchmarks, in order to identify opportunities for
improving current equipment management strategies, mining companies should participate
in maintenance benchmarking studies. These studies involve comparing the maintenance
performance of: mines operated by the same owner (internal benchmarking); competing
companies with a mutual interest in sharing data (competitive benchmarking); or
companies operating in different industry sectors generally acknowledged to be industry
leaders in maintenance (functional benchmarking). Since equipment operating parameters
can vary markedly from one mine to another, an essential element of benchmarking
studies is to find ways for eliminating bias in the data to enable accurate comparison; the
so called comparison of apples with apples.
In 2000 the Mining Council of Chile (Consejo Minero a.g.) agreed to assist the Mining
Centre of the Catholic University of Chile to undertake a competitive benchmarking study
of key maintenance performance indices in Chilean mines and concentrator plants. The
chief executives of the 17 companies that then formed the membership of the Mining
Council were approached with regard to participating in the benchmarking study. Eight
mines decided to participate in the study. All eight mines produced copper as the principal
product. Since one mine exclusively used underground extraction methods and another
mine submitted data in an aggregate manner that made it impossible to separate mine and
mill performance, the maintenance performance of the six remaining mines employing
open pit mining methods were benchmarked. In order to maintain the commercial
confidentiality of the participants, the names of these mines cannot be published. In the
study they are referred to by letters as mines A to F inclusively. The milling capacities of
these mines varied between 18.000 tpd and 156.000 tpd, and, in 2000, the six mines were
collectively responsible for 58% of Chilean copper production.
Study Objectives
The objectives of the benchmarking study were fourfold;
To ascertain the relative importance of maintenance as a percentage of mine
production costs
To identify the leaders in mine maintenance performance and to determine their
associated best-in-class performance indices.
To identify global improvement opportunities for the Chilean mining industry, and
To identify specific improvement opportunities for participating companies.

This paper outlines the methodology used and principal findings associated with the
benchmarking study.
Benchmarking Methodology
The first task in any benchmarking study (beyond identifying the potential
participants) is to determine which performance indices to compare (see Camp (1994) and

Watson (1993)). Considerable differences exist in the number and type of indices
measured by companies. Some companies measure only the basic indices, whereas
others have determined additional performance indices to be useful. It is therefore
necessary to determine which performance indices are commonly used by all
benchmarking participants, and, to narrow the focus of the study, which of these indices
should be solicited for inclusion in the benchmarking study.
Furthermore, companies have adopted widely different definitions when it comes to
calculating performance indices. For example, equipment availability may be calculated on
the basis of: calendar hours; or programmable hours (calendar hours minus unavoidable
losses due to energy cuts and natural phenomena) in a given time period. In any
benchmarking study it is essential to understand and locate these differences otherwise,
apples will be compared with oranges or bananas!
Maintenance Performance Indices
Labor
Materials

Business Environment
Operations

Spares & Repairables

Tools
Knowledge
Finance
External services
RESOURCES

Maintenance
System

Availability
Reliability
Maintainability
Throughput
Product Quality
Safety
Environmental Norms
Profitability
OUTCOMES

Figure 1: The Maintenance Resource Transformation Process

Maintenance is essentially a support process, as distinct from a core production
process. As Figure 1 shows, the maintenance system responds to mine operations, which
in turn must respond to the business environment. Maintenance can be modeled as a
transformation process which transforms resources (labor, materials, spares and
repairables, support equipment and tools, knowledge, finance and external services) to a
set of measurable outcomes designed to maintain productive capacity and capability
assurance. These outcomes are: equipment availability, reliability, maintainability, product
throughput, product quality (or yield), compliance with safety and environmental legislation,
and, most importantly, company profitability. If we accept that this model accurately
portrays the objectives of a maintenance organization, three classes of performance
indices can be identified. These are: effectiveness indices (how the achieved outcomes
compare with target outcomes); efficiency indices (how efficiently the resources are
utilized in producing the outcomes); and development indices (how much is being invested
to improve maintenance service levels and efficiency).

Effectiveness indices
Much has been published concerning maintenance performance indices (see, for
example: Campbell (1995); De Groote (1995); Wireman (1998); Art et al (1998); Dwight
(1999); and Duffuaa et al (1999)). The key maintenance effectiveness indices used in the
mining industry are equipment availability, reliability and maintainability. Reliability is often
measured by mean time between failures (MTBF), and maintainability as the mean time to
repair or restore service (MTTR). At the time of undertaking the benchmarking study
(2001), only two of the six participating mines were routinely measuring these parameters.
For this reason it was decided that the study should focus on comparing fleet availabilities
and forego the collection of fleet reliability and maintainability data1. Fleet availabilities
were solicited in the form of [available hours / (calendar hours lost hours)], where lost
hours include energy shutdowns and stoppages due to storms and other natural
phenomena.
Safety statistics, namely accident rate and severity (expressed as the number of losttime incidents and lost-time hours per million man hours respectively) were solicited for
maintenance personnel. This included both company employees and contractors working
on non-capital projects. Production data, in terms of tons of ore and waste mined per year
were solicited from the participating mines. As well as ensuring fleet availability and
reliability, maintenance contributes to a mines profitability via its cost efficiency. Total
annual maintenance costs for the mines were solicited which, combined with the
production data, enabled the unit costs of maintenance (US$/ton) to be calculated. These
costs include the direct and indirect costs of maintaining the mobile equipment and work
shops. In one case (Mine B), it was not possible to separate the primary crusher
maintenance costs from aggregate data submitted. This is an acknowledged source of
bias in the financial results.
Efficiency indices
Efficiency indicators can effectively be divided into two groups; financial and internal
process efficiency indicators. The following financial indicators were solicited from the
companies participating in the study:

Maintenance costs as a percentage of mining costs

Annual cost of mine maintenance, including the indirect costs associated with
supervision and planning.
Labor costs as a percentage of annual mine maintenance costs
Spares and repairables cost as a percentage of annual mine maintenance costs
Contractor costs as a percentage of annual mine maintenance costs
Overhead costs as a percentage of annual mine maintenance costs

Internal process efficiency indicators were solicited for:

The percentage of planned maintenance (preventive, predictive and programmed

major component replacement) carried out on each equipment fleet (blasthole

1
It is interesting to note that, in the three years that have passed since undertaking this study, most Chilean mines now
routinely report these variables. Considerable difficulty still exists in benchmarking MTBF and MTTR values between mines,
since no industry standard has been developed for the measurement of these variables. For instance, some mines include
all stoppages, including PMs, in their calculation, whilst others incorporate only those events which they classify as failures.

drills, hydraulic and cable shovels, wheel loaders, haul trucks and auxiliary
equipment)
Scheduled maintenance compliance (actual planned hours versus scheduled
planned hours)
Organizational efficiency in terms of the ratio of supervisors to maintenance
technicians (the inverse of this ratio is known as the span of control).
Investment in maintenance planning as evident from the ratio of planners to
maintenance technicians (planning clerks and statisticians were also considered to
be maintenance planners)
Efficiency in inventory practices as evident from the stores turnover ratio (value of
spares and repairables consumed versus average annual on-hand inventory value)
and service level (percentage of requisitions that the store is able to meet without
delay).

An efficiency index commonly used to compare the efficiency of maintenance across

different industry sectors is the annual cost of maintenance as a percentage of
replacement asset value. Due to difficulties in determining equipment replacement values,
it was decided not to include this index in the study.
Development indices
The development indices solicited concerned;
The level of training commitment to maintenance employees (both contractor and
company workers), in terms of annual training hours and investment per employee.
A breakdown of the educational status of maintenance employees, in terms of the
highest level of educational certification achieved.

The Balanced Scorecard approach

The management of any large enterprise involves the allocation of resources where
they will best create value. Different entities within the same company may have
competing objectives requiring compromises to be sought. The balanced scorecard, first
developed by the Harvard Business School professors Kaplan and Norton (1992), is a
means of balancing opposing goals that also effectively links performance indices with
company strategy. Although it has been successfully implemented by many Fortune 500
companies, the balanced scorecard has to date had limited application in the management
of mine equipment maintenance (see Tsang, 1998).
The balanced scorecard identifies four classes of performance indices. These are:
client satisfaction; financial performance; internal process and learning and growth
(innovation and development) indices. The first class of indices equates to process
effectiveness indices. The second and third classes (financial and internal process indices)
are efficiency indices, and the last class corresponds to the development indices. It was
therefore determined to structure and present the results of the benchmarking study using
the balanced scorecard format.
The Structured Questionnaire
Benchmarking studies should ideally be conducted by an independent team that
visits each of the participating mines. However, due to financial restrictions, it was decided

to conduct the benchmarking study via the use of a structured questionnaire. A

benchmarking questionnaire was devised for capturing the necessary performance data.
An annex to the questionnaire was also prepared which specified the form in which the
performance indicators should be measured. A copy of the questionnaire and annex was
sent be email to the maintenance managers of all participating companies. In addition to
maintenance performance data, information was solicited concerning mine operating
parameters (altitude above sea level, average haulage distances, rock hardness and
abrasivity) and fleet characteristics (fleet size, composition and capacity).
Data Collection and Quality Assurance
Data collection and revision took place over a period of six months. Five of the mines
participating in the study submitted data via the questionnaire, and a visit was made to one
mine in order to directly collect data (mine C). Quality assurance of the data was
undertaken by a three step process. The completed questionnaires were scrutinized for
missing, incomplete or inexact data before being re-sent to each participating company
with a list of queries. When the revised questionnaires were re-submitted, a preliminary
analysis of the performance data was undertaken. This involved constructing histograms
of each of the performance parameters, and, in some cases, x-y plots of key performance
indicators versus mine operating parameters. This process enabled outlier data to be
identified, resulting in additional queries being sent to the corresponding companies.
Following receipt of explanations and/or revisions for this data, a preliminary report was
prepared and submitted to each mine. This in turn generated queries from some of the
participating mines resulting in further revision of the data.

Results
The aggregate results of the benchmarking study are shown in Table 1. All data are
for maintenance performance registered in 2000.
Performance Index
CLIENT (EFFECTIVENESS) INDICES
Availability per fleet (%)2
Blasthole drills
Shovels
Wheel loaders
Haul trucks
Auxiliary equipment
Accident frequency3
Severity index3

Mines

Inferior

Superior

Mean

6
6
6
6
6
5
5

64%
68%
69%
76%
63%
0
0

89%
93%
88%
89%
85%
8.1
450

78%
84%
78%
83%
79%
4.12
153

FINANCIAL INDICES
Maintenance cost4 per ton extracted (US$/ton)5
Maintenance cost as % of mining cost
Maintenance cost per equipment (KUS$/equip)6
Labor cost as % of direct cost of maintenance
Spares & repairables as % of direct cost of maintenance
Contractors as % direct cost of maintenance
Overhead as % direct cost of maintenance

5
5
5
5
5
5
5

0.46
40%
486
0%
0%
16%
1%

0.29
50%
684
28%
49%
99%
7%

0.36
44%
549
14%
32%
50%
4%

INTERNAL PROCESS INDICES

Planned maintenance per fleet (%)7
Blasthole drills
Shovels
Wheel loaders
Haul trucks
Auxiliary equipment
Scheduled maintenance compliance
Maintenance man hours as % production man hours8
Contractor man hours as % production man hours9
Overtime (%)10
Ratio of supervisors to technicians (span of control)11
Ratio of maintenance planners to technicians11
Stores turnover12
Stores service level12

5
6
6
5
5
3
5
5
5
4
4
2
3

11%
45%
19%
25%
21%
47%
37%
20%
0%
1/6
1/10
1.7
80%

65%
67%
71%
58%
66%
91%
54%
98%
5.3%
1/16
1/24
1.9
100%

35%
56%
40%
44%
42%
67%
45%
56%
2.5%
1/8
1/14
1.8
92%

LEARNING & GROWTH INDICES

2

Availabilities recorded by Mines C, D and F are on the basis of calendar hours and do not take into account lost hours.
Fleet availabilities for the remaining companies should be marginally lowered for comparison.
3
Safety indicators for Mines A and D correspond to contractor personnel only, responsible for the majority of man hours.
4
Cost data for Mine B includes the primary crusher.
5
Includes ore and waste (does not includes ore from stockpiles). Maintenance and production costs are annual, do not
include depreciation and amortization, and are expressed in US dollars as of December 2000. The conversion factor used
considers both MPI (Major Price Index) and CPI (Consumer Price Index): Factor = 0.68*Variation CPI + 0.32*Variation MPI.
6
N of equipment includes: drills, shovels, loaders, haul trucks and auxiliary equipment.
7
Total maintenance hours are divided in two categories: planned maintenance (under schedule) and unplanned
maintenance (reactive).
8
Total man hours worked includes operations and maintenance for company and contractor personnel.
9
Contracted man-hours include only maintenance tasks and exclude capital improvement projects.
10
Mine A and Mine D values correspond to contracted personnel representing 84% and 98% of total personnel respectively.
11
Mine A and Mina D values correspond to contracted personnel.
12
Average values for the six months July-December 2000.

Training cost as % total maintenance cost13

Annual training hours per maintenance employee
Employees in training as % total employees
Training investment per maintenance employee (US$/person)
Education status of the maintenance workers:14
University (%)
Technical Professional qualification (%)
Technical training (%)
High school (%)
Primary school (%)

4
4
4
4

0.06%
27
32%
71

0.39%
75
100%
870

0.21%
55
77%
497

4
4
4
4
4

3%
4%
24%
13%
0%

24%
42%
52%
17%
17%

13%
27%
40%
15%
5%

Table 1: Maintenance benchmark results.

Discussion
(a) Fleet availabilities. Equipment availabilities are a complex function of many factors.
For example, haul truck availability depends on: planned maintenance practices
(preventive, predictive and programmed); mine altitude above sea level; haul route
distance and profile; haul route maintenance practices; equipment type (diesel-electric
or mechanical) capacity, and age (cumulative operating hours); climatic conditions
and truck/shovel operating practices. In order to determine the best-in-class
availability for a specific mining fleet, it is important to quantify the influence of each of
these variables.

Truck Fleet Availability (%)

0,90
Mina E
0,88

Mina D

0,86
Mina F

0,84
0,82
Mina B
0,80
0,78

Mina A

0,76
20%

30%

40%

50%

60%

Planned maintenance (%)

Figure 2: Haul truck fleet availability versus percentage planned maintenance

Figure 2 shows the relationship between truck fleet availability and percentage
planned maintenance for five of the six participating mines. Fleet availabilities
increase on average by 1% for every 4% increase in planned maintenance. The
increase will be slightly higher or lower for specific mines and truck fleets when the
other factors listed previously are taken into account. It should be stressed that the
availability values recorded are for overall fleet availability. The six mines participating
13
14

Training delivered to own personnel, with the exception of Mine D, which includes company and contracted personnel.
Mine D value corresponds to contracted personnel only.

in the study operate mixed haul trucks fleets, and whilst a new fleet may have an
availability in excess of 90%, the availability of an older truck fleet will tend to reduce
overall fleet availability.
(b) Maintenance costs. For the companies participating in the study, representing 58% of
the production of Chilean fine copper in 2000, the cost of maintenance represents
between 40% and 50% of mining costs (including operating and maintenance costs
but excluding general and administrative costs). The average value is 44%. This
highlights the importance of maintenance in the overall cost structure of mining.
(c) Unit maintenance costs. The cost of maintenance per ton extracted is dependent upon
environmental variables and operational factors that are specific to each mine. For this
reason, a comparison based on this indicator alone cannot be made. The main factor
affecting unit cost is the size of the total equipment fleet operated by the mine per tons
milled. An indicator that takes into account fleet size (a function of haul route distance
and profile, equipment availability and utilization and operational factors such as
blending) and can be better used for comparison is the maintenance cost per
equipment. However, this indicator does not take account of cost differences arising
from the use of equipment of different capacities.

Maintenance Cost / Equipment

(KUS$/Equipment)

(d) Planned maintenance. The low levels of planned maintenance (preventive, predictive
and programmed component replacement) for the equipment fleets indicate that
company resources are being used for reactive maintenance, resulting in higher costs,
lower fleet availabilities and making it more difficult to schedule proactive
maintenance. Analyzing the data per company, it can be seen that as planned
maintenance increases, the overall maintenance costs are reduced as a result of a
more efficient use of resources (See Figure 3).
800
700

Mine A
Mine B

600

Mine D

500

Mine C

Mine F

400
300
200
100
0
20%

30%

40%

50%

60%

70%

Planned Maintenance (%)

Figure 3: Annual maintenance cost per equipment v/s percentage planned maintenance15

15

For each company, percentage planned maintenance is calculated as the average of the percentage planned
maintenance for each equipment fleet weighted by fleet size. Mine B does not consider the blasthole drill and auxiliary
equipment fleets. Mine C does not include the haul truck fleet.

Figure 3 provides a useful empirical means of estimating potential maintenance cost

savings through improvement in planned maintenance practices.
(e) Scheduled maintenance compliance. A graph prepared for fleet availability as a
function of scheduled maintenance compliance showed strong positive correlations for
shovel and haul truck fleets. This indicates that, not only is the percentage planned
maintenance important, but it is important to meet targets set by weekly maintenance
plans.
(f) Span of control. Supervision ratios vary between 1/6 and 1/16 and were shown to be
strongly correlated with the use of contractors. Overall supervision ratios are higher for
companies making more use of contractors, since not only must a contractor employ
on-site supervisors, but the mine must employ administrators to supervise the
contractors. As Table 2 shows (see subsequent section), supervision ratios for the
mines are generally higher than those for other global industries. This reflects that fact
that the data in Table 2 is strongly weighted by process plant data, and the geographic
dispersion of blasthole drills, shovels and associated infrastructure requires that mines
employ proportionally more maintenance supervisors than is the case for maintaining
fixed process equipment.
(g) Planning ratio. Planning ratios vary between 1/10 and 1/24. This positions companies
between the second and fourth quartile results of the global industry data shown in
Table 2. Since maintenance planning has been shown to be a key variable in
influencing equipment availability and maintenance cost per equipment, an
opportunity exists for some of the participating companies to increase their respective
planning ratios.
(h) Training indicators. Training and development indicators for maintenance staff show a
low investment by the participating companies. This is further emphasized by the
global industry comparison in Table 2. Given that the majority of training hours are
dedicated to safety training, it can be concluded that, on average in 2000, Chilean
mining companies were investing little in maintenance technical training. Considerable
benefits could be attained by investing more resources in improving and/or developing
maintenance planning standards, and training maintenance personnel in the use of
planned maintenance techniques.
(i)

Educational level. The private sector mines participating in the study employed a
higher percentage of university and technically qualified maintenance professionals
than did the state-run mine that participated in the study. In addition, a trend towards
hiring better qualified maintenance personnel was shown by the two recently
commissioned mines participating in the study.

Comparison with other industries

Performance Index
Fourth
CLIENT (EFFECTIVENESS) INDICES
Availability per fleet (%)
Blasthole drills
Shovels
Wheel loaders
Haul trucks
Auxiliary equipment
Accident frequency
Severity index
FINANCIAL INDICES
Maintenance cost per ton extracted (US$/ton)
Maintenance cost as % of mining cost
Maintenance cost per equipment (KUS$/equip)
Labor cost as % of direct cost of maintenance
Spares & repairables as % of direct cost of
maintenance
Contractors as % direct cost of maintenance
Overhead as % direct cost of maintenance
INTERNAL PROCESS INDICES
Planned maintenance per fleet (%)
Blasthole drills
Shovels
Wheel loaders
Haul trucks
Auxiliary equipment
Scheduled maintenance compliance
Maintenance man hours as % production man hours
Contractor man hours as % production man hours
Overtime (%)
Ratio of supervisors to technicians (span of control)
Ratio of maintenance planners to technicians
Stores turnover
Stores service level
LEARNING & GROWTH INDICES
Training cost as % total maintenance cost
Annual training hours per maintenance employee
Employees in training as % total employees
Training investment per maintenance employee
(US$/person)

Third

Quadrant
Second

First

<78%
<78%
<78%
<78%
<78%

78-84 (78%)
78-84 (84%
78-84 (78%)
78-84 (83%)
78-84 (79%)

85-91
85-91
85-91
85-91
85-91

>91%
>91%
>91%
>91%
>91%

<8

8-19

20-40

>40 (50%)

<65% (35%)
<65% (56%)
<65% (40%)
<65% (44%)
<65% (42%)
<15

66-78
66-78
66-78
66-78
66-78
15-35

79-94
79-94
79-94
79-94
79-94
36-70 (67%)

95
95
95
95
95

<1/9 (1/8)
<1/25 (1/14)
<0.5
<93 (92%)

1/9-1/17
1/25-1/59
0.5-0.7
93-96

1/18-1/40
1/60-1/80
0.7-1.2
97-99

>1/40
>1/80
>1.2 (1.8)
>99

<40

40-69 (55)

70-80

>80

>70

Table 2: Comparison of results with global industry benchmark results (Humphries, 1998).
In 1998 James Humphries, Vice President Manufacturing for the engineering
company Fluor Daniel published a paper entitled Best-in-class maintenance benchmarks
in which maintenance benchmarks were gathered for 148 global companies considered to
be in the top quartile of their industry according to earnings and/or market share
(Humphries, 1998). The industries represented in this study included: mining and metals;
refining and petrochemical; paper; automotive; textiles; food processing; rubber products;
power; electronics; consumer products; chemicals and pharmaceuticals. 75% of these
companies were North American, 16% Asian and 9% European. Table 2 presents a

comparison of selected mine maintenance benchmark results (the figures in parenthesis

are the average benchmark results) with the results published by Humphries.
It can be seen that, in 2000, fleet availabilities for Chilean open pit operations were
low by world standards (third quartile) 16. In addition, planned maintenance percentages
and annual training hours per maintenance employee are in the lowest quartile. This
reinforces the point made in the previous discussion: in Chile, fleet availability and
maintenance costs could be considerably improved by improving and/or developing
maintenance planning standards, and training personnel in planned maintenance
practices.
CONCLUSIONS AND RECOMMENDATIONS
For the six open pit mines that participated in the study and collectively represented
58% of the copper production of Chile in 2000, maintenance costs averaged 44% of
mining costs. This highlights the importance of maintenance to the financial performance
of mines.
Percentage planned maintenance of equipment fleets are low by world standards,
averaging 35%, 56% and 44% respectively for blasthole drill, shovel and haul truck fleets.
Fleet availabilities were found to be significantly influenced by the percentage of
planned maintenance achieved (preventive, predictive and programmed component
replacement). For example, haul truck fleet availabilities were found to increase on
average by 1% for every 4% increase in planned maintenance.
Maintenance cost per equipment was found to decrease non-linearly with increases
in percentage planned maintenance. An empirical relationship was determined that can be
used to estimate potential cost savings as a result of improved planned maintenance
practices.
The ratio of maintenance planning staff to maintenance technicians varied between
1/10 and 1/24, indicating improvement opportunities for some of the participating
companies. Investment in technical training (including planned maintenance practice) was
found to be low by global industry standards.
It is concluded that fleet availability and maintenance costs in Chilean open-pit
operations could be considerably improved by improving and/or developing maintenance
planning standards, and investing in training personnel in planned maintenance
techniques.
Acknowledgements
The authors would like to acknowledge the assistance of the Mining Council of Chile for
supporting this study, as well as the maintenance and business improvement personnel of
the eight participating companies who gave so generously of their time and knowledge.

16

The availability figures in Table 2 correspond to those listed for discrete processes by Humphries (1998).

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