Why bother to collect data and waste artisans’ time by spending time in front of a workstation if the data is not working for you?

The Samancor Chrome story involves a rapid growth over the past couple of years where Samancor virtually doubled in size through the acquisition of 3 more ferrochrome smelter complexes and chrome ore mines. The evolving of the currently installed EAMS did not keep up with the growth rate and standardisation, functionality utilisation and data integrity suffered in the process. In 2020 Samancor management saw the need to establish an EAM department. The role of this department would be to develop and implement a plan to management its assets’ reliability and integrity to achieve production and availability targets cost effectively. This would be done for our 8 Business Units: 6 Smelter Complexes and 2 Mining Complexes.

A roadmap was developed to roll out this process and central to this roadmap was the “fixing up” of our SAP PM system and address the following key areas:

Assessment on our current system setup to determine gaps.

The “Back to Basics” project was registered and a suitable partner was searched for to assist Samancor in the execution of the above objectives. Collaborit was selected and appointed and the project kicked off in November 2023.

This project is progressing according to plan and has the excitement, adrenalin and “hollow tummy” experiences of a true roller coaster ride.

Key learnings:

1. If you thought it was going to be easy, it’s not

2. Communicate, communicate, communicate…

3. Manage the interfaces with other business functions. Asset management is not only Maintenance and Engineering.