Cases

Operations and logistics cases.

Real situations from my career at Vale and VLI, described without identifying people and without linking figures to locations.

Iron ore and steel

Situation: An iron ore terminal designed for single-trailer trucks started receiving B-doubles and road trains. The queue spilled onto the public road, the client was pressing, and everyone had the same diagnosis: not enough staff.
What I did: I spent an hour standing at a single point of the operation, just watching. Each operator owned a truck, not a step. I redrew the roles by step on the glass wall of the meeting room, with the shift leader, and the drawing became the standard.
Result: Close to 50% more unloading capacity, with the same team and no investment.

Grains

Situation: A mixed fleet of wagon types, loading without a standard and, at the peak of the harvest, demand above capacity. Every tonne not loaded was lost.
What I did: Each wagon got its own weight target, set as a percentage of its own payload limit. The production meeting moved out of the office into a room inside the operation, at shift change.
Result: Over 100 tonnes more per train with the same assets, and millions of reais in additional revenue in the first year.

Iron ore and steel

Situation: A terminal acted as the forward stockyard for a steel mill's blend, handling up to ten different ore products to chemical specification.
What I did: Segregation control by product and by yard, with traceability and unloading windows.
Result: No cross-contamination, at a terminal on which the client's daily revenue depended.

Grains

Situation: A grain terminal with the worst sanitary audit record in the unit.
What I did: An integrated management routine, a standard for each step and close follow-up as acting manager.
Result: The highest score in sanitary audits, the terminal's first permanent certification from Brazil's Ministry of Agriculture for grain handling, and record monthly throughput.

A similar situation in your operation?

Describe the context. I will point out the first thing to look at.