People

Finds equipment bottlenecks across the entire process chain. As deputy chief mechanical engineer of a mine division, he served as acting chief engineer of the division and stood in for the chief mechanical engineer of the entire complex.

Evaluates equipment and technical options before purchase and writes the procurement specification. As chief mechanical engineer of a processing plant, he was responsible for its mechanical equipment, evaluated supplier bids in tenders, selected new equipment and put it into service.

During installation, oversees the supplier’s representatives and prepares equipment for start-up. He personally ran the installation, adjustment and setup of pumps, compressors, conveyors and pipelines and was on the team for the reconstruction and new construction of a processing section.

Manages the mechanical scope of modernization projects. He was responsible for it in modernizing a plant shop and a compressor station and in rebuilding a reagent section.

Leads a production investment project from goal to result. Led the mining complex’s investment projects from goal and schedule to money spent and results delivered, including restoring output after a mine accident.

Answers for the productivity of the whole operation, from mine to tailings. For several years answered for the productivity of a mining complex of several mine divisions and ran their development and modernization programs.

Sets production requirements for the production management system (MES) and gets it working at the plants. He introduced digital production management tools, a production management system (MES) and centralized dispatch at the mining complex.

Gives a written assessment of technical decisions on equipment and production before they are approved. He reviews equipment selection, technical decisions, work sequencing and production economics while the design can still be corrected. As an external expert, he assessed technical decisions and feasibility studies for mining and chemical projects and the reasons production fell short of design targets, and accepted the results.

Keeps the production program and equipment reliability on track while operations ramp up to design targets. At a mine division, he removed bottlenecks and managed the ramp-up of facilities to design targets, the production program and equipment reliability. He restored and stabilized performance at underperforming operations.

Sets up the construction project office and builds the schedule by stage and start-up package. He keeps the schedule adjusted for the season and northern conditions and prepares the contracting strategy around it. He headed construction project offices at processing plants and a mine, and recruited and trained the project team.

Selects long-lead equipment and the main contractor while construction is still on paper. On a processing plant construction project, he selected that equipment and the contractor for the main facilities, took the contracting strategy through to approval and started construction on time.

Runs reconstruction at an operating plant so that output stays on plan. He ran the reconstruction of drying, granulation and flotation, including the installation of presses for granulation. He put a furnace into operation at a running facility and handed facilities over for operation with Rostekhnadzor, Russia’s industrial safety regulator, taking part. At operating facilities, he managed contractor work and equipment installation with supplier installation supervision, without halting planned output.

Reviews decisions on shaft construction and hoisting at a mine before they are signed. As project director, he ran the construction of mine shafts at a mining and processing complex, headed the project to develop and mine out the reserves of a mine, and organized the reconstruction of a skip hoist on a tight deadline.

Gets a delayed construction project back on schedule. He rebuilt the schedule around the critical path, wrote deadlines for critical work into contractor agreements and reduced the project’s delay.

Builds a year-ahead portfolio of digitalization and efficiency projects and calculates their financial effect. Each year his department lines up new digital projects for the plants, runs the efficiency improvement program with a plan and forecast by year, and works up investment projects with a forecast effect.

Runs digital production projects with the IT department, from mill load control to predictive equipment analytics. He is building a digital advisor for mill operation and a program that monitors filtrate pumps by load current, and with the IT department he is expanding a digital assistant. An automated control system at the processing plant has been implemented and runs in automatic mode.

Sets up pilot-scale trials of a new material at an operating plant and prepares a new unit for industrial trials. At the processing plant, his department is testing wear-resistant polyurethane pipes and hydrocyclone spigots in operation and preparing a unit designed to raise processing efficiency for industrial trials.

Analyzes how operations use planned equipment shutdown time and raw materials, and builds an efficiency improvement program. With his department, he carried out a comprehensive analysis of operational efficiency at one production stage and an analysis of the complex’s management structure. He analyzed the return on planned shutdowns of main equipment and put together a comprehensive program with a planned financial effect. He keeps the raw materials balance, and specific consumption per tonne of product has come down.

Runs a system that takes employee suggestions through to implementation and checks shop by shop whether improvement tools are holding. His department runs idea submission and a problem-solving board and met its annual targets for implemented ideas and number of contributors. It trains employees, communicates changes on information days and on screens, and rates how well the tools hold in each shop, and the ratings have gone up.

Picks, together with your people, the line for the first pilot, one where the shift itself needs the result. She draws the loss map for that line on the wall with the shift, marking a loss with a red sticker and an idea with a green one, and asks workers on the spot what keeps them from doing their job well. As paint shop manager, she introduced the company’s production system in the shop and ran continuous improvement projects.

Takes the analysis of downtime or defects down to the root cause. She looks for the cause with the team using the “five whys” and an Ishikawa diagram, under her rule “attack the process, not the people.” She settles disputes about the cause with a joint measurement and gives public credit to whoever finds a non-obvious cause. At the plant, she worked on introducing built-in quality, where a defect is stopped at the point where it occurs.

Involves both management and the foremen and informal shift leaders in the change, so that they keep the new routine going themselves. At the start, she maps everyone the change affects, from opponents to supporters, talks one-on-one with each key opponent and invites them to test the solution. In labor productivity programs she worked with the top management of companies, and she runs strategy and crisis management sessions.

Cascades plant goals down to shift metrics and puts the progress of the change on a daily board. A problem put on the board becomes a shared task for the shift, small wins are celebrated in front of everyone, and at the end the board shows a “before/after” with figures and the workers’ own words. At the plant, she headed the final testing and product rework units, and in the regional program she cascaded regional goals down to targets for each company.

Writes work standards together with your foremen so that a new person can understand them right at the operation. Instead of text procedures, she uses one-page instructions, photo standards for the workstation and color coding, and keeps a matrix for each shift showing who has mastered which operation. She was on the team that launched a second shift and a new plant, and she teaches production systems and labor productivity.

Brings together expertise from around the world for the plant’s task and arranges for engineers from different companies to work together on one project. He managed integrated solutions, from pilot plant trials to the supply of automated process systems.

Checks the supplier’s proposal against the plant’s technical specification, from scope of supply to spare parts and service after start-up. He managed the manufacture in Russia and the supply from abroad of major mineral processing equipment and its spare parts.

Breaks the plant’s automation brief down into steps by section and, as the first step, brings one unit into working order. Now leads strategic and digital projects for industrial companies, including production management system rollouts.