Accelerating Results
Rescuing iron ore profits, retaining $450 million in revenue, and boosting throughput, quality, and safety
Mining
In three months, we converted a contract-killing quality crisis into a $486 million swing—proving that disciplined, human-centered execution can turn “continuous improvement” into quantum leaps.
The challenge
A top-five U.S. iron-ore producer faced mounting quality failures—excess fines, erratic moisture, inconsistent mesh size—that put a $450 million annual contract at risk. After years of Six Sigma projects delivered only incremental gains, the CEO declared “good-enough” no longer good enough and demanded a step-change across five strategic levers: throughput, quality, maintenance, safety, and environmental impact.
Our approach
Empactful’s team touched down on three mine sites and, within ten days, mapped every choke-point from pit to port. We walked the crushers with operators, sat in pre-shift huddles, and overlaid real-time sensor data on ore-flow simulations to expose hidden bottlenecks.
Armed with that insight, we rewired the workweek around a single drumbeat:
Daily “pit-to-plant” stand-ups that united geology, processing, maintenance, and logistics in a 15-minute issue-clear.
Transparent micro-KPIs—loss-of-tonnage, rework hours, moisture variance—posted on visual boards by 9 a.m. every shift.
Front-line fix teams, coached to run rapid experiments (new blast patterns, auto-sample triggers, hot-swap maintenance kits) and report back wins or lessons within 24 hours.
A weekly leadership war-room that unlocked resources in hours, not weeks, and broadcast success stories across sites so yesterday’s breakthrough became tomorrow’s baseline.
By Day 30 the new cadence was muscle memory; by month 2, metrics were trending off the historical charts.
The results
By the end of the third month, the mines were running like a different business. Daily loss-of-tonnage charts that once bled red were now solid green, translating into $36 million in fresh, bankable margin locked into the annual run-rate.
More important, the customer who had one foot out the door renewed—securing $450 million in revenue that would have vanished overnight had quality not flipped so decisively.
Performance records were exceeded in every one of the CEO’s five strategic arenas:
Equipment availability climbed seven points, freeing extra haul-truck hours without a single cap-ex dollar.
Concentrator throughput jumped 9 percent, enough to fill two additional ore cars on every rail run.
Unplanned downtime dropped 14 percent, giving back whole shifts of productive time each week.
Process-fuel consumption slid 11 percent per ton, cutting both cost and carbon.
Site-wide safety and environmental KPIs posted their best quarter in three years.
The tangible payout was only half the story. Crews who had once shrugged at “continuous improvement” were now trading fix ideas over lunch; leaders who had tracked lagging metrics were coaching live on the floor.
What started as a rescue mission ended as a proof point that exponential results are possible—when execution is engineered for speed, visibility, and ownership.
Why it worked
The program succeeded because it replaced abstract improvement campaigns with visceral, line-of-sight urgency. Operators could see—literally on the board—how an extra half-percent moisture shaved $35K off the day or how a 12-minute faster shovel swap added two ore cars to the train. That clarity ignited ownership.
Leaders, meanwhile, stopped policing and started unblocking. Decisions once trapped in email threads moved to the stand-up and were solved on the spot. Early victories—like a seven-point jump in equipment availability—were celebrated in safety briefings and copied at sister mines within days.
Momentum compounded, skepticism evaporated, and the organization experienced, firsthand, what exponential progress feels like.
Latest
Mining
Rescuing iron ore profits, retaining $450 million in revenue, and boosting throughput, quality, and safety
In three months, we converted a contract-killing quality crisis into a $486 million swing—proving that disciplined, human-centered execution can turn “continuous improvement” into quantum leaps.
Latest
Mining
Rescuing iron ore profits, retaining $450 million in revenue, and boosting throughput, quality, and safety
In three months, we converted a contract-killing quality crisis into a $486 million swing—proving that disciplined, human-centered execution can turn “continuous improvement” into quantum leaps.
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