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Predictive maintenance program in spotlight

ARCH Coal’s predictive maintenance program is being honored as the best among the world’s mobile equipment fleets by a North American maintenance and reliability publication, the producer said this week.

Donna Schmidt
Predictive maintenance program in spotlight

"The mining environment is very dynamic, which makes the maintenance of equipment an intense and challenging effort,” Arch president John Eaves said of the company’s honor in Uptime Magazine.

"Earning the best predictive maintenance award is an important achievement for Arch Coal's national network of mines," he noted, adding that its internal practices include risk management and reducing exposure through planned, preventative and predictive maintenance.

The producer’s predictive maintenance program includes the placement of certified maintenance engineers at each of its mining complexes, all of whom adhere to standardized processes such as comprehensive oil and vibration analysis, ultrasonic flaw detection, thermography and motor circuit analysis.

The technology is then utilized for standards of quality and acceptance testing at Arch-certified rebuild and component facilities.

Arch director of technical and maintenance services Bob McCready pointed out that the company had achieved a 5% annual reduction in controllable maintenance costs over the past four years by incorporating a comprehensive predictive maintenance regime across all of the mines in its portfolio.

Also big for Arch in 2010 has been safety performance; most recently, the company’s Skyline underground mine in Utah was bestowed its fourth consecutive mine safety award from the Rocky Mountain Coal Mining Institute for its outstanding safety performance in 2009.

Skyline’s total incidence rate for 2009 matched its performance in 2008, totaling 0.82 incidents per 200,000 man hours worked, Arch spokesperson Kim Link told ILN in late June.

The RMCMI, which covers eight states in the western United States, bestows the safety honor annually to an underground mine for the prior calendar year.

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