The facility was officially opened on November 9 by Joy managing director Mark Finlay and Rockhampton Mayor Margaret Strelow.

“The completion of these facilities, coupled with the implementation of cellular work centres, are just a few of the elements that continue to show our commitment and focus to the market and our employees,” Finlay said.

The extension increases undercover floor space from 2000 square metres to 4500 m2. In addition, four 3.3KV outlets have been installed which will allow the centre to run full longwall compatibility trials and mini-builds on site.

The extension increases the facilities capacity from 110,000 man-hours to 150,000 hours. Other additions include an increase in crane capacity to 40 tonnes and a totally clean, sealed environment for refurbishment of hydraulic equipment and gearboxes.

Operations director George Carpenter has been instrumental in the reorganising of the Parkhurst workshops into cellular work cells which include electronics, electrical, gearbox, hydraulics and general repair cells. He said the strategy has focused on three main areas: delivering jobs on time, reducing cycle time, and improving quality.

“At Parkhurst during the last financial year we achieved 90% of rebuilds on time and have an improved goal for 2002,” Carpenter said.

Another area has been to reduce of the number and age of open orders for "repair and return" jobs. Repair and return job turnaround has steadily reduced, Carpenter said, with a target timeframe that reflects customer requirements.

In one example, the open orders for the operations of a major customer in central Queensland have been significantly reduced from $1.1 million to under $500,000.

Work is also under way to establish Joy’s account management program incorporating standardised repair costs, embodied in a structured repair and return agreement. Ongoing work with customers is developing joint predictive diagnostic evaluation processes.

“To be successful, we need to continue to build a relationship and customers need to trust that Joy has given them a good commercial deal and that the work can be done in time,” Carpenter said. "If we can implement this approach we can cut out a lot of unnecessary paperwork and tendering procedures.”

In other company news, Joy’s Moss Vale facility in NSW won the Joy Global President’s Award for Most Improved Safety operation. Joy’s other Australian operations also logged significant improvements during the period. The internal award recognises the 63% improvement in lost time injury frequency rate achieved at Moss Vale.

Joy Mining Machinery also achieved NATA (ISO 9001-2000) certification, making it one of only a handful of companies of its size in Australia to achieve this rating.

Integral to the certification is that all processes through the business have to show an element of continuous improvement, Carpenter said. This has lead to the introduction of surveys of new and existing customers and monitoring of the performance of returned repaired equipment.