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05/14/21

Reduce Downtimes in Your Quarry by Optimizing the Use of Your Machines

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As a quarry or fabrication facility owner, we know your worst nightmare is a downed machine. That’s why we’re here to help reduce downtimes in your quarry with the proper knowledge and service of your machines. 

One of the best ways to get the most out of your facility is by ensuring you’re optimizing the use of your quarry machines. 

Here’s a story of what a quarry recently went through to help illustrate this point: 

This quarry had one machine that did the primary break, and the piece that came off of that would then go to secondary machines to reduce it to the size they needed. 

They had two issues in their quarry:

  1. The larger machine was the only of its kind that they had, so if anything happened, they’d be in trouble.
  2. The waste coming off the machine was quite high. 

Then came a disaster; the machine went down and they were unable to buy the part they needed due to shipping delays, meaning they’d have to wait a while before they could be up and running again. 

Of course, we jumped in the car and drove over there to help. 

We realized they were making two cardinal errors in their quarry:

  1. They were producing a lot of scrap, using this machine to work on inferior material that had a low yield. The capacity of a machine is limited; if you’re feeding material that you know is not as good, you’re not being efficient enough. 
  2. They had a lot of capacity in terms of time and machines in the quarry that wasn’t being used. 

We determined that they needed a policy decision to only allow the highest quality stone pieces in specific sizes to be used in this machine. 

Why is this impactful? As soon as you decide on the quality of stone you’ll accept, production numbers can increase even if your machines are down. In fact, this quarry produced more finished product with the primary machine being down. 

Once you start thinking of it this way and optimizing your machines with the right quality and material, you can expect more efficiency and control in your quarry. 

We’d be happy to conduct a N.E.A.D.S analysis for you, get to the core of your problem, and figure out how to generate higher production for you. We’ll ensure you have a full understanding of the machine(s) in your quarry, how to use them properly, and how to get the most out of them so downtime risks due to mistakes like the one this quarry experienced are reduced significantly. If you’re not confident that you’re running your quarry as efficiently as possible and without risking downtimes, then reach out to us and we’ll get started.

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