Two dolphins on the swan and pilbara first visit!

Given the fact that Australia is well known for having lots sharks on its coasts, I thought that what I saw was the bloody big fish that kills so many surfers. Someone walking near byvand obviously well aware of the swan river's history, told me the two were dolphins! Nice! This the second time of my life that I actually see dolphins!

Famous Australia!

On the week of 11/2 I made my first trip to the pilbara region. I landed in Karratha! I visited the two ports that Rio Tinto operate on the coast. While landing, the view of Rio Tinto salt operations was amazing.

The ports are very important to what our CEO Sam Walsh consider to be actually a logistic business. I read an excellent "reportage" of the BOSS magazine belonging to the Australian Financial Review, in which Mr Walsh describes how he replicated the automotive industry continuous improvement model to Rio Tinto Iron Ore WA's operations!

He got the vision of transforming mining operations into integrated systems and processes supplying useful data to the famous operations centre located in Perth 1500 km away from the Pilbara Operations! From the mine to the port, everything is remotely controlled from the Operations Center, which look like the NASA control room!

I have been able to see ship loaders loading Iron Ore into ships automatically, with commands impulsed from Perth! Amazing!

I now understood where our competitive advantage lies in!

This visit to the port operations and rail division, showed me the extent to which we are a business in which safety, operational excellence as well as continuous improvement is at the core of everybody's endeavour!

I attended on leadership lunch in Cape Lambert. This forum was initiated to enable managers and superintendents to gather on a monthly basis to ensure that everyone has the right information to move respective teams as one towards corporate production goals as well as the most important zero harm objective! This is certainly s take away for someone like me!

While in Cape Lambert, a training coordinator took me through the reality side of the streamlining training dynamic in vigor in the operations here.

I also attended to a workshop organised by the training team, gathering leaders, to provide them with information that will enable a constructive as well as productive cooperation between training and other parts of functions within Cape Lambert operations. This is certainly a valuable take away!

I also visited the Mesa A Robe Valley mine. Two hours of drive from Dampier. Excellent opportunity to ride into the massive Komatsu 830 Haul truck!while in this truck, I have been able to notice during an hour, how it is important as a life saving commitment to focus on the journey not the destination, while driving any sort of vehicle on a mine site. ,