RungePincockMinarco has entered into an agreement to acquire 100% of the issued share capital of iSolutions, a leading global Asset Management software company with over 20 years’ experience in the provision of asset management, life cycle costing and budgeting software solutions to the mining industry. The combined offering “will create the only single vendor production and maintenance enterprise execution system in the market. This system will reduce the cost of mining as both the production and maintenance teams will be using the same software application to maximise the operational efficiency and productivity of their mobile mining equipment,” RPM claims.
While there are many economic variables mining executives cannot control, like global exchange rates and commodity prices, one cost in which they are firmly in command is the maintenance and life cycle management of their large mining equipment and the productivity they derive from them. This represents the largest cost to a mining operation.
Commenting on this acquisition, RPM CEO and Managing Director Richard Mathews said, “Mining is a very capital intensive industry and mobile mining equipment that moves material makes up a large proportion of the capital and operational spend for every mining company. Today as companies push to drive capital and operating costs down, it’s this area that presents the best opportunity for additional savings. With the combined expertise of iSolutions and RPM, there is no software company in the world that has a better in-depth knowledge of the real costs associated with maintaining these essential pieces of equipment and the optimisation of the maintenance strategies by which these costs can be minimised within mining.”
iSolutions is a global software company headquartered in Sydney, Australia with offices in Sydney, Brisbane, Santiago and Johannesburg. Its flagship AMT software tracks and/or manages the repair and maintenance of over 50% of the world’s large mining equipment (loading units, haul trucks, dozers, graders, etc.) from the world’s largest mining OEMs and their dealer networks including Caterpillar, Komatsu, Hitachi, Michelin and Atlas Copco.
The use of the AMT software isn’t limited to just the OEMs with large mining companies using iSolutions software to manage their equipment maintenance and to extend the functionality of their Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) asset management systems. Glencore, Newmont, Anglo American and Newcrest are just some of the large mining companies who use iSolutions software along with the world’s top mining contracting companies including Downer, HSE Mining and Moolmans.
The addition of iSolutions software products will extend RPM’s offering in the areas of mine planning, scheduling, execution, simulation and financial costing and budgeting.
At the heart of the iSolutions suite of products is the Dynamic Lifecycle Costing (DLCC) engine. DLCC is the process of forecasting (in real time) every maintenance event for an asset to the end of its useful life including the expected future cost and performance of the asset. This functionality enables asset managers to easily identify potential issues and take action early, saving money and avoiding costly down time.
Being SAP, Oracle and JDE certified, AMT extends and complements the capabilities of traditional Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) systems in the asset management space. RPM already works very closely with SAP and, as such, this transaction strengthens what is already a very complementary working relationship.
Co-founder and Managing Director of iSolutions, Graeme Elgie said “For the last 20 years we have worked tirelessly building software solutions for companies that sell, manage, repair and maintain large mining equipment. We have always wanted our products to be integrated with the industry’s leading production, costing and simulation systems and this transaction does exactly that.
“We have been very impressed with RPM’s vision for the industry and the investment they are making in their products in what has been a difficult period for suppliers to the mining industry. We are convinced that the iSolutions product suite will benefit from increased investment and the sales and marketing support which RPM can offer it right around the world. ”
Mathews continued by saying “RPM leads the industry in mine planning and iSolutions leads the market in equipment maintenance planning and cost control. We believe that by bringing these two product sets together into one integrated real time offering, we can finally deliver the nirvana of production and maintenance planning in harmony which will significantly reduce the cost of mining. We see this as an industry step change as it will redefine mining execution.
“RPM has invested heavily in new innovative products including our ultra-short-term production execution system (XECUTE), our planning systems (XPAC Solutions) and our haulage simulation product (HAULSIM). These enterprise products really do complement iSolutions maintenance strategy and execution applications.
“The value proposition for XERAS Enterprise will also be significantly strengthened now that maintenance managers will be able to accurately predict the capital and operational saving of different maintenance options and strategies, as well as utilising the latest in Condition Based Monitoring (CBM) technologies. The founders of iSolutions have taken the same enterprise software path as RPM except that whilst we have been focused on production they have focused on maintenance.The bringing together of these two enterprise solutions to a company’s ERP is exactly what managers and executives are striving to achieve.
“We can’t wait to bring our fully integrated production, maintenance, simulation and costing offering to market. This will be a real game changer for us as nobody else can provide this offering which we know will fundamentally redefine the way planning is done and will deliver large financial benefits to the industry.”