Operational excellence
Delivered about $90 million in value through business improvement initiatives
Our approach
We are focused on continuous improvement in key areas of our business including marketing, asset management, mining and processing.
Collaboration is an important part of business improvement. By establishing common systems, solving common issues and sharing knowledge and experiences across sites and the wider Rio Tinto Group, our business is able to improve efficiency and create additional value.
2009 performance
Coal & Allied produced 25.2 million tonnes of coal, which represented a small increase on 2008, and similar sales volumes to 2008 levels as infrastructure continued to constrain growth. Significant steps were made during 2009 to alleviate these constraints, which will enable our business to expand its production in the short term to better match the fixed plant capacity at operations.
During 2009 the business improvement team continued work to introduce and embed a LEAN methodology to help find ways to do business better, faster and smarter. The LEAN programme is based on teamwork and is helping us solve problems, improve performance, reduce waste and increase efficiency in our business.
Business improvement programmes in New South Wales created about $90 million in value throughout 2009. While this was significantly down on the $330 million in value delivered during 2008, it was in line with value delivered in 2007. The large increase experienced in 2008 was driven by the specific market conditions at the time.
