Problem: In 2014 this mine was reaching its end of life. In 2013, 2.1 m tons of Kimberlite was processed, and the operation ran at a loss at that time. The Kimberlite processing plant was found to be the operations bottleneck.  It was also three months behind in paying its suppliers.

 

Intervention: In July 2014 we started with the Production Flow intervention. The managers and workers from all functional departments received two weeks of training around the principles of operating the Operations Room. Intervention support needed to be paused for three months (partly due to the unstable political climat)e, in spite of this the employees were able to achieve increased production  

 

Results: Kimberlite processed in 2014 increased from 2.1 million tons in 2013 to 2.9 million tons, a 38% increase. The payment backlog had been wiped out; the mine was profitable once more. As a result the owners extended the life of the mine to 2037.