This involved the appointment of Paul Mulley as general manager responsible for all DBT diesel and development equipment, new and after sales. Another key change is the posting of Bob Sherack as general manager for customer service and after sales business activity, including implementing a customer care strategy to improve the life cycle management of DBT's equipment.

As a major original equipment manufacturer (OEM), DBT has substantial after-sales arrangements with mines in both states. With three complete longwall systems operating in Queensland, DBT has evolved a modified approach for handling its after-sales relationships with customers.

"The Queensland mining region has generated some new demands because of the vastness and remoteness of the area as well as providing the highly productive mines with technical support," said newly appointed DBT national customer relations manager, Geoff Newby. "Who can know more about the equipment than the original equipment manufacturer?"

Traditionally, the mine site after-sales role was filled by a service engineer whose main focus tended to be keeping equipment operating. He was a "jack of all trades", often expected to perform routine mine maintenance functions.

A new role – called site representative - has now been established that subtly changes the "reactive" focus of the service engineer. The role of service engineer still exists but he is now a product specialist, with specialisation in shields or shearers, for example. The site representative now fulfils more of a proactive coordination function related to previously overlooked functions, including inventory management and maintenance planning.

Most importantly, said Newby, the site representative's main focus was on the relationship with the customer, to avoid small issues erupting into major ones. The site representative was tasked with improving reliability through maintenance and support. Improvements in availability were expected to flow through to improved utilisation.

Newby said what had also changed at a cultural level was the interface between the OEM representative and the mine. There was more emphasis on planning and greater involvement with the mine's day-to-day running.

But, as Newby remarked: "We can't schedule the work. We can plan, including spare parts needs, but the mine site controls the scheduling to fit their production cycle."

Other than customer relations and inventory management, Newby said the role of the site representative encompassed the use of a comprehensive audit system. Audit sheets had been developed for DBT equipment to standardise the way it was managed, from commissioning to routine maintenance.

"For a shield for example, there may be 12-15 different audit sheets. Rather than trying to audit one shield for everything, we audit one item, or a sub-assembly, across all shields. This builds a spare parts count as well," Newby said. All the information is collected in an equipment database that can be analysed and used to trend failures and make design improvements.

"The information collected effectively lays the foundation of our company-wide life cycle process, enabling DBT to recommend solutions to increase our customers' productivity and lower operational costs. Close involvement throughout the life cycle also helps us to develop new technology and systems," Newby said.

To support this function DBT recently established the national customer relations manager role to which Newby was appointed. He said he had seen first-hand the way Queensland's coal mining industry had evolved, having emigrated to Australia in 1990 to work as a service engineer in Queensland, progressing to state manager, and then spending 18 months as a longwall engineer at a mine site.

Newby believes lessons learnt in that operational role are among the most valuable of his working life. In 2000 he returned to the OE business, taking on the role of DBT's Queensland customer relations manager.

Some lessons learned in Queensland will gradually be implemented in NSW but, as Newby remarked: "Some of the things generated in Queensland are not necessarily solutions for NSW and there will be lessons to be learned from NSW too."