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  • Rio Tinto Iron Ore deploys Mobile Maintenance Solution on handhelds from palmOne

    mDrover adopted by mineral resource giant to provide world-class maintenance practices

    Rio Tinto is a world leader in finding, mining and processing the earth's mineral resources and has more than 65 mines and operations globally. Hamersley Iron, its subsidiary, is located in the iron-rich Pilbara region of far northwest Australia and exports close to 70 million tonnes of iron ore a year to the global iron and steel industries.

    Hamersley Iron is responsible for 60 percent of Australia's iron ore production and currently uses Yambay's mDrover maintenance solution running on handhelds from palmOne, Inc. to assist in achieving its goal of world-class maintenance practices.

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  • "The handhelds from palmOne were chosen for their size, long battery life, ease of data input and screen visibility in daylight. The handhelds from palmOne have also survived the harsh operating environment well; often being carried in toolboxes across the site."


    Andrew Stamp,
    Director of Enterprise Applications, Yambay

    The Challenge
    Management is implementing world-class maintenance practices as part of efforts to become an industry leader in cost, productivity and safety performance. Effective use of operational information is fundamental to this effort, and Hamersley has implemented SAP's Plant Maintenance module to manage information. Although this initiative has produced benefits in back-office standardisation, the costs and difficulty associated with capturing quality data has proven to be a bottleneck operationally.

    Previously, operator-maintainers and schedulers spent significant amounts of time printing, compiling, and distributing paper forms; and then collating and entering data into the asset-management system. As a result, significant variations occurred in timeliness and integrity of maintenance data. Paper forms were often not taken to the point-of-work, and hand-written feedback often went missing or was illegible. The tedious nature of transcribing paper forms led to further errors and delays.

    Consequently, the business needed a mobile maintenance solution that allowed point-of-work data management and provided a platform for future mobile solutions.

    The Solution
    To address these issues, Hamersley Iron implemented Australian developer Yambay's mDrover mobile-maintenance solution on handhelds from palmOne. The mDrover configuration allows operator-maintainers to view the information needed to complete their work while enabling the collection of a broad range of feedback against jobs and fault reports, and returning this data to the back-end system. A holistic implementation process was adopted that involved updates to both master data and business processes.

    "The handhelds from palmOne were chosen for their size, long battery life, ease of data input and screen visibility in daylight," says Andrew Stamp, director of Enterprise Applications, Yambay.

    Stamp continued, "The handhelds from palmOne have also survived the harsh operating environment well; often being carried in toolboxes across the site."

    The Outcome
    The two-year period following the first mobile-maintenance implementation has seen the business achieve an 8 percent reduction in annual maintenance costs and record production levels. Hamersley Iron's Maintenance Manager, Neil Smith says, "the mDrover application on handhelds has been central in our migration to greater planned maintenance."

    Two major business benefits have been observed:

    • Significant improvements occurred in quality, quantity and timeliness of jobs and fault reports. "We now have access to consistent timely information that can be cross-referred against work orders, which enables us to plan and solve problems more efficiently," observed Daryll Gallaghan, Maintenance Scheduler.
    • Operator-maintainer and supervisor time spent managing maintenance paperwork was reduced - a saving of about one full-time equivalent per 10-person maintenance work crew.

    Hamersley Iron is now implementing the mDrover on handhelds from palmOne across its operations and using the mobile-infrastructure to deploy additional handhelds from palmOne and Yambay solutions, including safety and production.

    About palmOne, Inc.
    palmOne, Inc. delivers what matters most to customers - whether a single consumer or company of thousands - enabling users to improve their personal lives and professional productivity through mobile devices and solutions. palmOne is the name adopted in October 2003 by Palm, Inc., when it spun off PalmSource, Inc., maker of the Palm OS® platform software, and acquired Handspring, Inc. Uniting the Zire™, Tungsten™ and Treo™ sub-brands, the creation of palmOne launched a new, stronger market leader in handheld computer and communications hardware and software solutions. More information about palmOne, Inc., is available at www.palm.com/asia.

    About Hamersley Iron
    Hamersley Iron Pty Ltd, a member of the Rio Tinto Group, is a leading supplier of iron ore. Hamersley employs approximately 2000 people in Western Australia, and exports close to 70 million tonnes of iron ore a year to the global iron and steel industries.

    More information is available at www.hamersleyiron.com.

    About Yambay
    Yambay was founded in 1997 and pioneered development of software applications for handheld devices designed to meet the demands of enterprises seeking to mobilise core business processes. This focus has seen the business deliver numerous solutions for work dispatch and management for a wide range of sectors with clients including BHP Billiton, Rio Tinto, Woodside Energy, and Toyota.

    More information is available at: www.yambay.com.