CONTINUOUS IMPROVEMENT IMPLEMENTATION AT HIGHLAND VALLEY COPPER

Continuous Improvement (CI) is a strong philosophical approach to business operational management. It has roots with the automotive manufacturer Toyota and statistician W. Edwards Deming. Adoption of CI principles into business has documented performance improvement achievements greater than 10% with no capital investment. Operating mining companies share many of the same business conditions that Toyota did during the development of CI.Under Canada’s largest diversified resource company, Teck resources Ltd. (Teck),Highland Valley Copper (HVC) has begun the CI implementation. The status of the implementation is strong but still requires significant efforts over the next five years to solidify it as a culture at HVC. The paper suggests that the next steps for CI at HVC involve developing a communications protocol, resetting the formal aspects of CI practices and defining the progression requirements for potential CI workers as they pertain the participation in CI. These recommendations in concert with continued strong executive sponsorship will progress HVC’s CI culture efforts closer to the missions statement set by the Teck corporate operational excellence group at the beginning of the CI implementation effort:Our vision is to embed an improvement culture within our organization that can continually recognize, analyze, prioritize and act on opportunities to improve our results and all other values central to our business.