Life Cycle Management

Life Cycle Management’s, or LCM, objective is to provide a range of products and services that achieves the lowest cost per ton over the life of the equipment. LCM is important because the cost to maintain, repair and rebuild the equipment over its life is 2-3 times the initial purchase price. LCM is of increased importance in today’s full production environment because every hour of downtime costs lost revenue that cannot be recovered.

 

We deploy Life Cycle Management at Joy Global Underground Mining through a wide range of programs. They all add up to the most extensive aftermarket capability in the industry. In addition to spare parts distribution and our Centers of Excellence for rebuilds, we have 200 field service engineers around the world, in mines every day to work on improving equipment performance. Component Exchange Programs, or CEP, give the advantage of an immediate trade-out of critical components to allow the affected machine to get back to work as quickly as possible. Cost Per Ton, or CPT, programs deliver parts, rebuilds and maintenance at a specified cost per ton of mined product. CPT has consistently proven to deliver higher machine reliability at lower cost than conventional maintenance efforts. And finally, we also offer training courses and programs that enable mine personnel to become more effective in the operation and maintenance of our equipment.
 

Despite already being the recognized leader, we are working to extend our LCM programs in two important dimensions. First, we would like to provide full fleet management that would more effectively integrate our range of programs. In ultimate form, we would manage the equipment so you can focus on managing your mining operations.

 

Secondly, technology will significantly improve the effectiveness of all of our LCM programs. We are designing all of our control systems to support condition monitoring, remote diagnostics and shift productivity analysis, and also to support communicating this information to the surface. We firmly believe that it will be these capabilities that offer the next step-change in machine performance. We have already been able to use these tools to increase machine productivity by more than 50%. In the longer run, these will be essential tools to replace highly skilled workers who will begin retiring in the next few years. In fact, we envision 24/7 Tech Centers that support the work of underground crews through remote condition monitoring and remote diagnostics.

 

As you can see, Life Cycle Management is at the core of almost everything we do. We have highlighted many of the efforts currently deployed at Joy, and provided some insight into future extensions. If we can do a better job of aligning our programs with your needs or of delivering these programs more effectively, please let us know—because we want to make sure you are getting the lowest cost per ton over the life of your equipment.