SOURCE: Kay Sever | June 24, 2025
In 2025 we will focus on sustaining the gains achieved via the optimization process. Why spend a year talking about sustainability? Your optimization gains are at risk of being lost in future months/years unless certain preventive actions are taken. This risk is worth some investigation and contemplation.
The secret to sustaining optimization gains over decades is making strategic management choices that 1) preserve the gains already captured AND 2) maintain access to potential gains not yet discovered. The entire management team must unanimously agree to each choice and remain aligned each day to sustain their gains long-term… just as a sports team would all work to win during each season of play.
Through my work, I have identified six action items that require unanimous management agreement and participation. These six items “align” your management system and team with optimization goals and principles.
- Incorporate a few new data-points into numbers-based decision-making.
- Communicate in a slightly different way about performance.
- Build a team with an “expanded goal” of achieving “best” performance, which makes budget easier to achieve.
- Adopt new standards for communicating about problems and involve the right people in solutions.
- Support each other so all team members remain aligned to a goal of “best possible” results. If one team member reverts back to old ways of working, all your optimization gains are at risk.
- Design/implement a training plan for new employees and management personnel to keep your “optimization culture” going as new employees join your organization.
From June to November we will focus on these action items in detail… why they are important and why these management choices are not optional. In July we are reviewing the importance of Item #2… let’s get started!
#2 – Communicate in a slightly different way about performance.
At virtually every operation, management communicates on a scheduled basis with the workforce and within the team… daily shift meetings, weekly meetings, monthly meetings, budget meetings, project meetings, etc. Having a few new numbers linked to performance/earnings potential and the gap between today’s performance and what’s possible to achieve will change the course of the conversation at all of these meetings and make it possible for a company to achieve their “best” financial results.
In many of these meetings, the management team reviews actual performance and the operating/maintenance plan for the day, month or year. Examples of topics covered include:
- Total tons, tons/hour and other important KPIs (key performance indicators) – D&B, ore/waste moved, tons processed (concentrator, smelter, refinery, etc.)
- Budget goals and the variance from budget.
- Status of planned jobs/projects vs. budget (major planned maintenance jobs, equipment moves, conveyor repairs, mill liner replacement, pad prep, etc.)
- Unplanned downtime (reasons for it, status, plans for making up production losses).
- Changes to the plan made by management (often driven by budget shortfalls).
In these meetings, your conversation about numbers (and your vision for success) is limited by two datasets – actual vs. budget. The normal discussion goes something like this:
You compare actual to the plan/budget to learn if you met expectations or fell short. If you fell short of the budget, you may decide to change the plan to reduce the shortfall.
In this analysis, you have no data for what was possible to achieve, which means you don’t know how much better you could have done (regardless of your budget targets). You could be leaving millions of dollars on the table and not know it.
Your conversation with your workforce and within your team changes IF you have data for optimized/”best possible” performance:
Last month we discussed the value of adding a few new data points to management’s decision criteria. These numbers would reflect potential performance at key places in the value stream. With this third dataset, you and your people have a new perspective about your operation’s capabilities BEFORE you decide to buy new equipment to increase production or invest in a plant expansion.
- Data for “best” performance will help you achieve budget:
- Budget goals are almost always lower than “best” values, which means that actions taken to optimize performance will help you reach and/or exceed your budget goals.
- You will know if you have accidently approved a budget target that is unachievable. This is really important to catch BEFORE budgets are finalized because an unachievable target sets your people up for failure and damages management credibility.
- If you can measure a goal, you can chase that goal. For the very first time, data for “best” enables your team to think about and strive for what is possible to achieve.
- You can assess where you are today vs. the “best” you could do.
- You can talk about action plans that will help you optimize performance.
- You can chart trends for actual vs. “best”. As you make progress, you can watch the gap approach zero, which means you are optimizing that variable!
- You can compare actual to “best” and ask questions about what is holding you back. Obstacles and barriers that have never been discussed are often exposed and shared once “best” can be quantified.
- Data for “best” performance makes it possible to optimize performance are FREE, both for the production value stream and the administrative organization.
- Value stream production functions and your administrative organization can collaborate about fixing performance weaknesses between departments inside the company. Often millions of dollars of losses (trapped within/between departments) are never reported; these losses can be quantified and reduced everywhere with a “best” dataset and a cross-functional team effort.
Impact on Morale: Your management team and your workforce will look forward to coming to work every day because they can finally talk about, measure and fix problems that have been holding them back for years… both in the production value stream and administrative support groups!
Thought for the year: Connecting intentional strategies to the sustainability of optimization gains is a winning combination. Your team can maximize the chance to sustain today’s gains (and gains yet to be discovered) with tactics designed for that purpose. Taking intentional actions to sustain gains is an overlooked strategy for “being the best” in your industry and maximizing shareholder value long-term
Kay Sever is an Expert on Achieving “Best Possible” Results. Kay helps executive and management teams tap their hidden profit potential and reach their optimization goals. Kay has developed a LIVESTREAM management training/coaching system for Optimization Management called MiningOpportunity – NO TRAVEL REQUIRED. See MiningOpportunity.com for her contact information and training information.
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- About Us
Kay has worked side by side with corporate and production sites in a management/leadership/consulting role for 35+ years. She helps management teams improve performance, profit, culture and change, but does it in a way that connects people and the corporate culture to their hidden potential. Kay helps companies move “beyond improvement” to a state of “sustained optimization”. With her guidance and the MiningOpportunity system, management teams can measure the losses caused by weaknesses in their current culture, shift to a Loss Reduction Culture to reduce the losses, and “manage” the gains from the new culture as a second income stream.
