Results like these are easy to state and harder to explain, which is why most case studies are unconvincing. A breakdown reduction figure on its own tells a reader nothing about whether the same thing would happen at their site, because it does not say what actually changed on the ground. What follows is a mining fleet of roughly two hundred machines, the three specific operating changes that produced the improvement, and an honest account of which ones did most of the work and what took longest. You can discuss whether your own fleet has the same conditions in a free 30-minute session.
A 200-Machine Mining Fleet, Six Months, Fewer Breakdowns
Digital inspection, meter-based PM scheduling, and parts tracking applied across a working mining fleet — and what each one contributed.
The Headline Figures
42%
Reduction in unplanned breakdowns over the six-month period
28%
Lower maintenance cost per operating hour
91%
Fleet availability at the end of the period
Figures are specific to this fleet's starting position, which matters more than the percentages themselves.
Where They Started
Inspections recorded on paper pads, collected inconsistently, and rarely reaching the workshop before the machine did.
Services scheduled on calendar dates, so heavily worked machines ran well past their real interval while lightly used ones were serviced early.
Parts ordered after the machine reached the workshop, with the bay occupied throughout the procurement wait.
No reliable view of which machines were consuming the maintenance budget, so replacement decisions were argued rather than calculated.
The Three Changes, and What Each Did
Operators completed checklists on a phone, and failed items raised work orders that reached the responsible supervisor immediately rather than travelling by paper or conversation.
Contribution: the largest share of the breakdown reduction, because faults that were previously reported verbally and forgotten started producing action.
Service intervals moved from calendar dates to actual engine hours, so machines were serviced according to how hard they had been worked.
Contribution: slower to show than the first change, since it depends on a full service cycle passing before the effect appears in the numbers.
Parts were identified at the point the defect was logged, and stock was visible across sites rather than checked store by store.
Contribution: most of the cost per hour improvement, through shorter bay occupancy and fewer duplicate purchases.
See Whether Your Fleet Has the Same Conditions
The size of the gain depends heavily on where you are starting from, and that is a short conversation rather than a guess.
What This Case Does Not Prove
This fleet started from paper records and calendar-based servicing, which is the starting position where the largest gains are available. A fleet already running disciplined meter-based PM in a well-maintained system would see a smaller improvement, because most of the recoverable loss has already been recovered.
The improvement also required sustained attention from the maintenance head through the first two months, particularly on inspection completion. Sites that switched on the software without that attention improved more slowly.
Six months is long enough to see breakdown frequency move and too short to draw conclusions about component life or replacement economics, which need longer to show.
Frequently Asked Questions
Which change should we make first?
Digital inspection with routed defects, because it produced the largest share of the improvement here and it is the foundation the other two rely on. Meter readings and parts decisions both depend on inspections actually being completed. You can plan the sequence on a call with our team.
How soon did results start appearing?
Administrative and reporting improvements came within weeks. Breakdown frequency took longer, because it depends on inspections catching faults before they mature into failures.
Does fleet size change what is achievable?
Larger fleets tend to have more recoverable loss from record fragmentation across sites. Smaller single-site fleets often have tighter informal control already, so the gain is real but usually smaller.
Would this work on a construction fleet rather than mining?
The mechanisms are the same, though duty cycles differ. Mining fleets tend to have higher utilisation, which makes meter-based scheduling more valuable than it is for equipment that sits idle often.
How do we measure whether it is working for us?
Track the ratio of emergency to planned work orders, inspection completion rate, and maintenance cost per operating hour from the start, so you have a baseline to compare against. Start with a free trial.
Start With Inspection, Then Scheduling, Then Parts
Get defects routed to the people who can act on them, move services onto actual engine hours, and bring parts identification forward to the defect log — in that order, because each one makes the next more effective.
