We have had an amazing couple of days in Belo Horizonte. The city itself is not particularly attractive but for anyone with a mining bent this area is approaching Nirvana. There are mines everywhere which mine everything from iron ore to gemstones. However - no coal. Belo Horizonte is about 450km from Rio de Janeiro and is a small city of about 4M people, ie. It is bigger than Sydney. Like everywhere in Brazil the traffic is a nightmare.
We spent the first part of the week putting the final touches on the 4hr presentation I was scheduled to give on Thursday. It had to be in English and Portuguese with both versions perfectly aligned with animations etc.
On Wednesday we visited CSN’s iron ore mine near Congonhaus; about 2hrs out of Belo Horizonte. The town is “interesting” and we didn’t stay there (unlucky Trevor). It is a big mine with EX5500 excavators, P&H2800 shovels, Cat793 and Terex 4400 trucks. They are planning a major expansion over the next few years. Their plans are to produce upwards of 70M tonnes of product iron per year. The most memorable part was the mine vehicle we travelled in. It was seriously the worst mine vehicle I have ever been in and sounded like it was going to blow up at any second. I prayed that it would just stop in a puff of smoke. Probably a hire car! I gave them a presentation in English which was translated a page / line at a time into Portuguese. I was told the feedback was good. I didn’t have a clue what they were saying.
On Thursday we had the big Vale presentation in Belo Horizonte. There were about 40 people in attendance from two of Vale’s regions (south and east) and head office people. We had the General Manager of Innovation as well as the Manager of Truck and Loader Innovation and Manager Geology from the Innovation Group present plus a number of senior head office people. There were also ten mine managers present. We had real time translation from me speaking English to Portuguese through headsets.& There was a man and a woman translating who worked half hour shifts. They were amazing. What a skill. To hear in one language and speak the words in another. The sad part is that the male translator’s English was much better than my corrupted Australian English. His parents were British Missionaries so he is bilingual. The major screen which the audience saw was in Portuguese and another little screen I was looking at in English. It took many days of planning and setting up but I think we pulled it off. The Distritec guys were ecstatic about how it went. We actually received feedback from the Northern Vale division (who weren’t there) who said it was very well received. Seems like it caused quite an impact. It looks like simply a matter of time before we get the planned contract with Vale Marianas and others may be interested.
Friday morning we met with the Manager of Truck and Loader Innovation as a follow up to a discussion on Thursday. They are trying to predict truck performance as part of a Zero Budget approach. As far as I can tell this is Vale’s equivalent of Six Sigma or Rio’s Lean. Zero Budget means zero variance from budget. Plans must be met. They seem open to our assistance although I will probably get the Biarri people involved with their Operations Research.
On Monday we fly to Carajas which is in the Northern region to repeat the presentation to another 30 people. This will be more difficult as we won’t have the real time translation. So it will be back to page/line at a time being translated. We will probably have to cut down the slides. We have already culled the presentation from about 270 when we started here to 142 and that fitted in well in the 4 hrs I actually spoke. Once I got confidence in the translators (they kept telling me not to worry about them) I was able to do it like I would present in Australia. Next week will be different.
Click here for the presentation slides ...
We spent the first part of the week putting the final touches on the 4hr presentation I was scheduled to give on Thursday. It had to be in English and Portuguese with both versions perfectly aligned with animations etc.
On Wednesday we visited CSN’s iron ore mine near Congonhaus; about 2hrs out of Belo Horizonte. The town is “interesting” and we didn’t stay there (unlucky Trevor). It is a big mine with EX5500 excavators, P&H2800 shovels, Cat793 and Terex 4400 trucks. They are planning a major expansion over the next few years. Their plans are to produce upwards of 70M tonnes of product iron per year. The most memorable part was the mine vehicle we travelled in. It was seriously the worst mine vehicle I have ever been in and sounded like it was going to blow up at any second. I prayed that it would just stop in a puff of smoke. Probably a hire car! I gave them a presentation in English which was translated a page / line at a time into Portuguese. I was told the feedback was good. I didn’t have a clue what they were saying.
On Thursday we had the big Vale presentation in Belo Horizonte. There were about 40 people in attendance from two of Vale’s regions (south and east) and head office people. We had the General Manager of Innovation as well as the Manager of Truck and Loader Innovation and Manager Geology from the Innovation Group present plus a number of senior head office people. There were also ten mine managers present. We had real time translation from me speaking English to Portuguese through headsets.& There was a man and a woman translating who worked half hour shifts. They were amazing. What a skill. To hear in one language and speak the words in another. The sad part is that the male translator’s English was much better than my corrupted Australian English. His parents were British Missionaries so he is bilingual. The major screen which the audience saw was in Portuguese and another little screen I was looking at in English. It took many days of planning and setting up but I think we pulled it off. The Distritec guys were ecstatic about how it went. We actually received feedback from the Northern Vale division (who weren’t there) who said it was very well received. Seems like it caused quite an impact. It looks like simply a matter of time before we get the planned contract with Vale Marianas and others may be interested.
Friday morning we met with the Manager of Truck and Loader Innovation as a follow up to a discussion on Thursday. They are trying to predict truck performance as part of a Zero Budget approach. As far as I can tell this is Vale’s equivalent of Six Sigma or Rio’s Lean. Zero Budget means zero variance from budget. Plans must be met. They seem open to our assistance although I will probably get the Biarri people involved with their Operations Research.
On Monday we fly to Carajas which is in the Northern region to repeat the presentation to another 30 people. This will be more difficult as we won’t have the real time translation. So it will be back to page/line at a time being translated. We will probably have to cut down the slides. We have already culled the presentation from about 270 when we started here to 142 and that fitted in well in the 4 hrs I actually spoke. Once I got confidence in the translators (they kept telling me not to worry about them) I was able to do it like I would present in Australia. Next week will be different.
Click here for the presentation slides ...
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