Understanding and assessment of mining equipment
effectiveness
Jacek Paraszczak
Productivity and efficiency of mining equipment are
among the most important factors contributing to unit
mining cost, and measuring and benchmarking them is
one of the best ways of identifying the possibilities of
improvement. It is in this context that the present paper
discusses the notion of overall equipment effectiveness
(OEE). The paper reviews main components of OEE –
availability, utilisation and production efficiency. It
discusses some of the factors influencing those
components as well as different means of quantifying
them, and proposes a number of key performance
indicators (KPI) associated with them. The paper
critically reviews metrics already in use by mining
companies and equipment manufacturers and proposes
a number of other measures whose implementation
would be beneficial for mine operators. The indicators
are also analysed from the point of view of their
meaningfulness, practicality and usefulness for further
analysis. The paper also addresses the question of data
quality and it provides a number of recommendations
concerning performance reporting and follow-up of
equipment efficiency.
Jacek Paraszczak is in the Department of Mining,
Metallurgical and Materials Engineering, Université Laval,
Quebec City, PQ G1K 7P4, Canada (Tel: +1 418 656 5103;
Fax: +1 418 656 5343; E-mail: jacek.paraszczak@
gmn.ulaval.ca).
© 2005 Institute of Materials, Minerals and Mining and
Australasian Institute of Mining and Metallurgy. Published
by Maney on behalf of the Institutes. Manuscript received 18
July 2005; accepted in final form 10 August 2005.
Keywords: Mining equipment, effectiveness, performance
indicators
INTRODUCTION
Production and cost figures in mining operations
depend to a large extent on the performance of the
equipment employed. Since modern machinery is
increasingly sophisticated and capital intensive, it is
crucial that it be highly efficient and perform revenue-
generating jobs for as much of its available time
(uptime) as possible. Key factors necessary for
achieving that goal and reducing costs include higher
reliability, better maintainability, increasing utilisation
rate, use of full design capacity and better asset
DOI 10.1179/037178405X53971 Mining Technology (Trans. Inst. Min. Metall. A) September 2005 Vol. 114 A147
management. A variety of means and actions are
available for this purpose; however, they vary
considerably as far as the ratio of the incurred cost to
equipment effectiveness is concerned. Therefore, it is
crucial to analyse where the efforts to improve the
situation should be focused. According to a
management expert Tom Peters: ‘What gets measured
gets done’ (cited in Campbell6). Measuring the factors
influencing equipment effectiveness and a thorough
analysis of properly defined and followed-up
performance indicators allow one to identify
competitive opportunities, prioritise resources and
assess the progress of improvement initiatives. It is
with these objectives in mind that this paper examines
different performance indicators and metrics
applicable for mining equipment, both those widely
used and those less common or little known, but
nevertheless potentially beneficial for mine operators.
These issues will be discussed with regard to their
pertinence for effectiveness assessment, their accuracy
and the interpretation of their numeric values.
DEFINING EQUIPMENT EFFECTIVENESS
According to the New Shorter Oxford English
Dictionary,2 effectiveness is synonymous with the
quality of being efficient, or ‘producing a desired
result with the minimum wasted effort’. In the mining
industry, effectiveness is most often associated
intimately with equipment availability and utilisation
of assets. Although both of those are undoubtedly
significant contributing factors, a number of others
exist whose impact is often underestimated if not
neglected. An interesting approach allowing one to
quantify effectiveness in a broader context is provided
by the overall equipment effectiveness (OEE) index
developed by the Japan Institute of Plant
Maintenance (JIPM).3 A general definition of OEE
for the manufacturing industry is given by Koch:12
OEE = availability : performance rate : quality rate
where:
uptime
availability4,10,12 A= : 100%
total hours
total output
performance rate P= : 100%
potential (rated) output
good output
quality rate Q= : 100%
total output
Paraszczak Understanding and assessment of mining equipment effectiveness
In the case of mobile mining equipment, the above
definition needs to be slightly modified. Unlike in the
manufacturing industry, the quality rate does not
seem to be a pertinent factor for equipment such as
loaders, shovels, trucks or conveyors. It may be
employed, however, with regard to drilling equipment:
holes which are jammed and those that deviate too
much from the target may be considered as not
meeting quality standards. Nevertheless, at this stage
of the discussion, quality rate will not be taken into
consideration. Therefore, for our purposes, a
definition based on those provided by Campbell and
Jardine7 as well as Dunn10 will be more pertinent:
OEE = availability : utilization rate :
production (or process) efficiency
where:
uptime
availability4,10,12 A= : 100%
total hours
utilization rate
total hours - downtime - s tan dby/idle
U= : 100%
total hours - downtime
uptime - s tan dby idle
= : 100%
uptime
production efficiency
actual production
E= : 100%
_ uptime - s tan dby/idle i : rated capacity
All OEE components mentioned above are a function
of a number of often quite complex factors. The
following sections review and discuss those components
in depth and present a number of measures and metrics
to quantify them in order to illustrate better their nature,
pertinence and overall impact.
AVAILABILITY
Availability is defined as a proportion of time during
which an item or equipment is capable of performing
its specified functions (uptime) divided by a total
number of hours in a given period:4,10
uptime
A= : 100%
total hours
= total hours - downtime hours : 100%
total hours
Availability is the most commonly used mining
equipment performance metric due to the simplicity
of its definition and the easiness of interpretation of
its numeric results. Unfortunately, there is no
industry-wide consensus of interpretation of input
values.11,13,16 For example, the notion of ‘total hours’ is
unequivocal only for those mines operating 24 hours a
day, 7 days a week. In other cases, mines tend to use
‘scheduled operating hours’ representing a number of
nominal working hours within a certain period.13 If a
given mine operates two 10-h shifts Monday to Friday
and one 10-h shift on Saturdays, in one week it will
accumulate 110 scheduled operating hours as opposed
to 168 total hours elapsed.
A148 Mining Technology (Trans. Inst. Min. Metall. A) September 2005 Vol. 114
Downtime is an even more complex concept, since
it depends on several factors and is interpreted in a
variety of manners. Usually, and not without some
reason, it is associated directly with reliability, which is
measured mainly with mean time between failures
(MTBF) or mean time between shutdowns (MTBS).
Shutdowns include all outages due to equipment
failures and/or planned maintenance actions
(regardless of whether they are corrective, preventive,
or predictive in nature). The following is a simplified
definition of the MTBS:6
number of operating hours
MTBS =
number of shutdowns
The MTBS is definitely one of the most adequate
equipment performance metrics, but, surprisingly
enough, there are relatively few mining sites that
record and analyse it,1,13,16 even though a number of
reference values are available.8 It is highly recom-
mended not only to keep track of MTBS values, but
also to watch carefully their change trends over time,
as they are often far more informative than ‘bare’
values for a given period. At the same time, however,
one should keep in mind that the effects of shutdowns
(the duration of downtime that follows) may be more
important than their frequency. Operators may prefer
to have seven 1-h shutdowns a month, rather than a
single 12-h one. It is also worth mentioning that
MTBS does not have to be expressed in time units (i.e.
hours), particularly if operating time does not reflect
adequately the quantity of useful work accomplished
by a given type of equipment.5,15
Apart from reliability, availability depends also on
maintainability and maintenance support,9 both of
which are a function of several further factors. It is
generally recognised that downtime is not limited to
so-called ‘active maintenance time’, or the time during
which the actual work (corrective or preventive
maintenance) is being conducted on a machine. This
time is usually extended by all kinds of delays and
waiting periods. Therefore, trustworthy information
about the duration of all the components of downtime
is a key factor in identifying and eliminating the
factors responsible for the most significant time and
money losses. With this in mind, it is suggested that
performance data collection procedures respect all or
a part of the guidelines below:
(i) It is crucial to record precisely the beginning of
downtime, understood as the exact moment
when a piece of equipment fails or is withdrawn
from service due to a forthcoming maintenance
action. It should be stressed that a beginning of
downtime seldom coincides with a beginning of
active maintenance and those two should not be
confused.
(ii) It is important to capture and record the
beginning and the end of active maintenance time,
which ought to be expressed in ‘clock hours’.
Time elapsed while active maintenance is being
conducted need not be equivalent to maintenance
man-hours (MMH) spent to execute this task as it
is often assumed in practice.4 Nonetheless, MMH
 Paraszczak Understanding and assessment of mining equipment effectiveness
remains vitally important information with
regard to maintenance management and cost;
therefore, its tracking (follow-up) should not be
neglected or postponed.
(iii) The end of downtime should be always under-
stood as the moment when all the maintenance
work (including final checks and testing, if
necessary) has been completed and the machine
can resume work in accordance with original
equipment manufacturer’s (OEM) specifications.
From this moment, the machine ought to be
reported ‘available’ or ‘operable’, regardless of
whether it is used immediately for operations or
not. Failure to do so will eventually result in
distorting (albeit unintentionally) the true nature
of the problem, which may lie within ‘utilisation’
and ‘asset management’ domains rather than be
associated with reliability and maintenance.
(iv) The duration of delays and waiting time is
obtained by subtracting the active maintenance
time from total length of downtime. It is highly
beneficial to categorise the delays further by the
factor responsible – for example, logistics (reaction
time since failure to the arrival of maintenance
personnel, waiting time due to a lack of repair
crew, lack of space in repair bays, lack of spare
parts, etc.), administration, external services, etc.
(v) In reporting, a distinction between scheduled
(planned) and unscheduled (unplanned) main-
tenance should be made, both in terms of active
maintenance time (expressed in hours elapsed) as
well as maintenance man-hours (MMH).
(vi) Actual equipment operating hours are among
the most crucial data to be recorded. Whenever
possible, they should be registered with onboard
instruments and/or sensors. ‘Manual’ reporting,
although vital and sometimes inevitable, often
contributes to a substantial bias in data.
When these guidelines are respected, we obtain
credible and reasonably precise data which allows one
to calculate useful performance indicators such as:
(i) Mean time to restore (MTTR) – average duration
of active maintenance actions expressed in ‘clock
hours’.
(ii) Mean downtime (MDT) – contrary to MTTR, it
includes not only active maintenance time but also
all delays, providing a more complete picture of
equipment availability than MTTR alone (MDT
should also be expressed in ‘clock hours’).
(iii) Share of different categories of delays and waiting
time in total downtime. Further subdividing those
into subcategories enables more in-depth analysis.
(iv) Ratio of planned (scheduled) maintenance activ-
ities to all interventions (‘maintenance efficiency’17).
Ideally, this ratio should be calculated in terms of
not only the number of maintenance interventions,
but also of the duration of active maintenance time
and maintenance labour (maintenance man-hours
[MMH]).
(v) Maintenance ratio (MR) calculated by dividing
maintenance man-hours (MMH) by equipment
operating hours in a given period of time.
Mining Technology (Trans. Inst. Min. Metall. A) September 2005 Vol. 114 A149
The first three indicators help to evaluate mainten-
ance practices, logistics and administration efficiency,
as well as maintenance support (including external
services). The percentage of scheduled work is a good
estimator of current maintenance practices and well-
founded reference values exist,8 which are useful for
benchmarking. Subsequently, the maintenance ratio
may also be used for the purpose of equipment and
maintenance scheduling, and also as an auxiliary tool
in equipment replacement decision-making.8,15
The following fictitious, but probable, situation
illustrates how the application of a number of metrics to
characterise downtime provides valuable information
which can be hardly deduced from ‘bare’ availability
numbers. For a given period of time, the availability of a
loader has been 64%, which is undoubtedly far from
satisfactory. The most obvious interpretation blaming
the low reliability of the machine is eliminated by
thorough analysis of downtime, which reveals that only
a third of loader’s downtime was ‘active maintenance’
time, the rest being due to long queuing periods for
repair shop space and notoriously delayed spare part
deliveries. This knowledge allows us to assign priorities
better, and save money, time and effort by focusing on
remedies other than attempts to improve the loader’s
reliability, whose impact on the machine’s effectiveness
would be far less. With the bare availability value of
64%, taking an informed decision on where and how to
act would have been by far more difficult.
EQUIPMENT UTILISATION
A piece of equipment that is in an ‘up-state’ (capable
of performing the work it was designed to do) is rarely
used throughout all of its available time. For example,
a given unit may be designated as a back-up/standby
unit, or be idle due to stage of the operational cycle or
due to a lack of operator. Utilisation, called also ‘use
of availability’, usually expressed as:
number of operating hours log ged
U= : 100%
uptime _ available time i
is a common performance measure in the mining
industry. As it was the case for availability, its value as
a metric depends largely on the quality of input data.
Many types of equipment are equipped with onboard
instruments which log operating hours and provide
trustworthy data. Unfortunately, since many machines
(particularly in underground mines) still lack such
devices, ‘manual’ reporting sometimes remains the
only option. However, the values recorded in this
manner are often only rough estimates subject to a
bias. If availability follow-up is deficient as well (see
above), utilisation records are in fact almost
meaningless due to a severe bias. If we can assure a
reasonable quality of input values, the utilisation rate
becomes a valuable metric; however, as in the case of
availability, it gives only a partial picture of equipment
effectiveness. Once again, in order to gain better
insight into the issue, it is recommended to define
distinct categories within equipment uptime, for
example:
Paraszczak Understanding and assessment of mining equipment effectiveness
(i) Operating.
(ii) Idle – left as a back-up/standby unit.
(iii) Idle due to production schedule and/or to
unprepared workplace (blasting, lack of muck to
load, no face available for drilling, etc.).
(iv) Idle due to a lack of operator.
Analysis of uptime components may help explain
possible discrepancies between available time and actual
operating time and thus identify the areas where
corrective measures are the most needed. For example, it
may reveal symptoms of an oversized equipment fleet.
Unfortunately, the fact that a piece of equipment is
considered operating, does not automatically mean
that it performs revenue-generating work, or that it
works at its full capacity. The following section
discusses this issue.
PRODUCTION EFFICIENCY
Referring to the manufacturing industry, Moubray14
mentioned that the primary function of a machine is
described by the following three aspects: (i) it must
work; (ii) it must work at the right pace; and (iii) it
must assure the required quality.
The first aspect concerns the issues discussed in the
previous sections (availability and utilisation), but the
two others merit some additional attention. As Wiebmer
and Widdifield17 put it: ‘What a machine is capable of
producing, and what it actually produces are two
different numbers’. Operators’ skills, training level, and
even attitude and motivation, have a tremendous impact
on the amount of actual work a given machine can
perform. On the other hand, even with a ‘perfect’
operator at the controls, a seemingly operational piece of
equipment may underperform substantially. A loaded
truck that cannot achieve more than 80% of its maximal
speed for given conditions due to clogged air filters, a
shovel that takes a few seconds more per loading cycle
due to problems with a hydraulic pump or a drill-rig
whose penetration rate is considerably affected by low air
pressure are examples of the seemingly ‘operational’
equipment that performs below its OEM technical
specifications.
Furthermore, with poor management of mine
operations, some machines may record a decent number
of ‘operating hours’, while running well below their full
production capacity. As mine operators are in fact
concerned not by the pure number of operating hours but
by the actual amount of revenue-generating work done by
a given machine, assessing and measuring equipment
performance is of extreme importance. Many mines
follow the amount of work done for various purposes
including calculation of bonuses for equipment operators.
Recorded values may be compared with original OEM
specifications for given operating conditions, which gives
‘production efficiency’ expressed as a percentage:
production efficiency =
J N
K actual productive work O single metric, OEE, although very useful and
K _ tot. hr - downtime - s tan dby idle i : rated capacity O
L P
: 100%
A150 Mining Technology (Trans. Inst. Min. Metall. A) September 2005 Vol. 114
This value is part of the general equation used to
calculate OEE (see above). However, it should be
stressed that operating conditions for mobile mining
equipment often diverge considerably from those
assumed by the OEM. Therefore, the notion of ‘rated
capacity’ with regard to mining equipment appears to
be much less easily applicable than for example in
manufacturing. This may severely affect the relevance
of thus defined production efficiency as a truly useful
metric for mine operators.
Another point to focus on concerns the units in
which the work to be done is expressed. They should
encompass the character of operations or a process
executed by a given machine as well as the working
conditions. For example, unless travel distances and
haul roads for LHDs or trucks remain the same for a
long period of time, ‘number of trips/loads/buckets’
may have little significance as opposed to ‘tonnes x
kilometres’. Similarly, the number of rock bolts
installed by a bolter is less meaningful an indicator if
the mine uses a variety of different dimensions of bolts
(diameter and length).
CONCLUSIONS
Equipment effectiveness is an issue of growing
importance as far as mining costs and profitability are
concerned. It is evident that there is more to
effectiveness than availability and utilisation, which
are used as principal performance metrics in the
mining industry. As discussed above, the overall
equipment effectiveness is a function of several, often
very complex, contributing factors.
Quantifying these factors is one of the crucial elements
in the quest to maximise effectiveness. Experience from
other branches of industry, such as manufacturing,
indicates that key performance indicators (KPI) serve this
purpose very well. However, in actual practice, only a
minority of mines use those indicators extensively.11,13,16 In
order to get a broader and clearer perspective of
equipment efficiency and productivity, mining companies
are strongly recommended to follow and analyse a larger
number of indicators such as those presented and
discussed in this paper, as the usefulness of implementing
more KPI is incontestable and the effort invested in their
implementation will undoubtedly prove rewarding.
Although the quality and quantity of the necessary data
and information are a constant concern and the problems
with data collection persist, it is encouraging to watch
constant progress in mine equipment instrumentation.
This offers mine operators new avenues and more useful
tools to assess equipment effectiveness and help them
tackle problems related to reliability, maintainability,
availability, utilisation and production rates of their fleets.
At the same time, the implementation and
subsequent use of the overall equipment effectiveness
(OEE) index is clearly not a universal and perfect
remedy for equipment performance problems. As a
practical, has its drawbacks. Some specialists question
its value on the grounds that in principle, it is only a
ratio between what a piece of equipment or a system
 Paraszczak Understanding and assessment of mining equipment effectiveness
actually produces to what it can theoretically produce.
Also, the use of three variables in the same equation
implies that all three have equal weighting, which may
not be the case in practice. If OEE increases through a
substantial rise of availability, but at the same time
performance goes down, the end result for a mine
operator may be negative.
Furthermore, numbers may be misleading: if we
applied OEE definitions blindly, we would have to
assume that overcharging the asset (over 100%
production efficiency being actually equipment abuse)
would increase the OEE. This may lead to a
completely false conclusion that it is possible to
obtain an apparent improvement, by forcing an asset
to operate beyond its design limits.14 However, such
erroneous interpretations may be avoided by strictly
applying the definitions formulated by Koch in the
OEE industry standard.12 In general, it should also be
stressed that the use of OEE for the purposes of
benchmarking is not to be recommended for the
mining industry due to substantial differences in
operating conditions, current economic situation,
company targets and policies, etc.
In the opinion of the author, despite some of its
drawbacks, OEE should not be discarded as a metric
and an indicator of equipment effectiveness in the
mining industry. Nevertheless, its value for mining
operators will be limited unless its contributing
factors are measured and analysed more adequately
and in greater depth than is commonly done by a
majority of mine operators.
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
The author is very grateful to Messrs Arno Koch (Blom
Consultancy, The Netherlands), Julian Poniewierski
(Runge, Australia) and Mike Coles (Hatch, Australia)
for their valuable comments, suggestions and discussions
on the content of this paper.
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Author
Jacek Paraszczak completed an MSc/Licensed Engineer
degree in mechanical Engineering at the University of
Mining and Metallurgy in Krakow in his native Poland.
Subsequently, he worked in the mining equipment industry
for several years, before returning to the same university
where he completed a PhD in mine transport. In 1990, he
joined the Department of Mining, Metallurgical and
Materials Engineering at Université Laval in Quebec City,
Canada, where he holds a position of full professor. His
research interests are focused on mining and construction
equipment reliability, maintainability, and performance,
non-explosive hard rock excavation as well as materials
handling. He has led and participated in several research
projects in Canada, Poland and Finland. He is currently an
executive member of the Maintainance/Engineering
Division of the Canadian Institute of Mining, Metallurgy
and Petroleum (CIM), a member of the Order of Engineers
(province of Quebec), Society of Mining Engineers (SME)
and Society of Reliability Engineers.