Newmont Porcupine Kaizen Events

A+I has worked with various Newmont Operations over the years. In 2019, A+I was approached by Porcupine Continuous Improvement lead to help execute a Kaizen event in pursuit of improving the Underground Drilling and Loading Process. Longhole Drilling and Loading Process were lagging behind to its potential and considered to be the main bottleneck in the Production process at Hoyle Pond Mine.  A+I team visited the underground mine and assessed the Longhole Drilling and Loading Process to identify opportunities for improving both quantity and quality aspects. A Kaizen event (5-day) was then planned and executed to make a step change in performance and then sustain the gains. Kaizen resulted in new standard processes and routines to reduce the lead time between drilling and loading as well as supplier and customer processes (gap between one process finishing and next process starting) as well as cycle times. In parallel a performance management process was established as a visual board which kept the focus of the right people at the right time (by shift and by day) on the constraints.