Newcrest Lihir is continuing its campaign to take the operation to its full potential as a gold mine of global significance.
Dubbed ‘The Lihir Way’, the campaign is enabling the 20-year-old business to operate with advanced safety standards and prosperity for the next 30 years.
In the past two years, Lihir’s performance has increased significantly, from processing 10 million tons of ore per annum (10Mtpa) to just under 13Mtpa with an aspiration to increase to 15Mtpa.
“For Lihir to reach its full potential, we need to continually optimise the way we work and the structure of our team,” said the operations’ general managers Michael Drake (Mining and Processing) and John Mullumby (Business Support).
‘The Lihir Way’ campaign with the tagline ‘Going from Good to Great’ is defining better work practices, identifying capabilities and improving systems, processes and tools for improved safety and operational discipline for the business. It sets Lihir’s future aspiration as achieving zero fatalities, demonstrating care for its host environment and communities and helping community and government become active development partners.
“If we achieve all that, we will make Lihir become a Tier One gold asset in terms of safety performance, scale, production and cost,” the general managers said.
Business improvement programs being rolled out so far in ‘The Lihir Way’ campaign include Edge, which is empowering employees to initiate and implement ideas to reduce waste, improve safety and cut costs.
Another strategic initiative is the Management Operating Systems (MOS) Improvement program that defines roles, capabilities, processes, systems and tools required to safely and efficiently deliver plans. The MOS improvement program is currently being rolled out at the operation’s Process Plant.
A series of interviews, observations and brown paper discussions with the involvement of over 250 employees covering technical areas from its Process Plant, Fixed Plant Maintenance, Shutdowns, Power & Utilities, Engineering & Projects Department as well as contributions from business partners has already been conducted.
Richard Thomas, a supervisor with the processing operations, says he hopes the information collected will help with developing better systems.
“Some of the systems that we have here are not working, so I hope that with the information collected, a more workable system with clear guidelines are developed to ensure our systems are effective and are contributing to our targeted outcomes,” he said.
The next phase of the MOS will be the Design and Implementation stages to start in August and involve other functions of the operation.
MOS will deliver the new operating strategy for Lihir to set itself up to reach its full potential as a world class gold asset.
(Brown paper discussions about how MOS can be improved)