Métodos para análise de modos de falhas e aumento da confiabilidade da moagem em plantas de beneficiamento de minérios

Abstract

The guarantee of stability in the grinding process for mining companies emerges as a critically important factor. In this way, the study of reliability seeks to provide guidelines, enable analyses, and establish profiles of losses to facilitate the development of approaches that address the main failure modes and promote stable operations with reduced corrective downtime for mills, pumps, and other equipment required in the grinding area. Low reliability in this sector can lead to constant operational failures, increased maintenance costs for spare parts, services, and equipment, as well as overloads in other areas, production losses, and a decrease in the final product quality, directly affecting the company’s competitiveness in the market. This work aims to present a study on how to increase the efficiency of ore beneficiation grinding plants by adopting the premise of increasing their reliability and reducing the failure rate over time for all equipment classified as critical to production. The techniques used by Reliability Engineering and methodologies employed from a Lean Six Sigma perspective, aimed at optimizing processes, will be discussed. Additionally, appropriate techniques and methodologies for analyzing reliability in different scenarios will be explored. This way, it will be possible to establish connections between reliability and failure modes, as well as identify the main issues and recurring problems in the grinding sector of a mining company. The research is based on industries that carry out real-time predictive monitoring of assets and have a dedicated team for Maintenance Planning, Scheduling, and Control (PPCM). It is expected that the implementation of these measures will contribute to increased productivity and, consequently, market competitiveness for mining companies that adopt Reliability-Centered Maintenance (RCM) concepts or Lean Six Sigma methodology. This research can contribute to a better understanding by maintenance teams in the mining industry of the techniques and tools available to ensure stable production and budget compliance. This, in turn, enables the management of physical assets in grinding, avoiding waste of time, capital, and resources, while also leading to improved production results resulting from stability and operational confidence, made possible through the current maintenance-focused study.