RPMGlobal has launched its first Software as a Service (SaaS) product, providing mining companies, it says, with the capability to undertake haulage calculations in a cloud environment.

With more and more operations choosing to move business-critical operations into the cloud, RPM has leveraged the growing shift from the desktop by collaborating with industry partners to launch a service-based approach to haulage calculations, known as Haulage as a Service (HaaS).

This cloud enabled, service-oriented approach to haulage analysis means users are no longer confined to one application on the desktop. Under the new SaaS model, customers are able to write their own applications to interact with HaaS. Users can then configure haul traces, haul routes, settings and trucks to run travel time calculations automatically in the cloud.

HaaS leverages the travel time calculation engine contained within RPM’s TALPAC product which has been the de-facto standard for simulation within the mining industry for more than 40 years, according to RPM. This calculation engine enables users or customer applications to undertake travel time calculations on demand.

RPMGlobal Chief Executive Officer, Richard Mathews, said: “HaaS is tailored to the current requirements of our customers to cloud-enable their operations and enable their businesses to be conducted remotely no matter where they or their people are physically located.

“Providing our customers with flexible and scalable ways to use RPM’s software is a key part of our customer service promise, and cloud-hosted options enhance our ability to support our customers through an internet-enabled cloud access to the hosted application.

“Making our innovative software available through a variety of delivery methods will remain critical moving forward and with a number of our customers undergoing the transition to cloud environments, we are proud to be at the forefront of this migration.”

The reporting and calibration benefits within the cloud HaaS offering are already resulting in miners requesting access to HaaS, RPM says. Miners are using HaaS as a way of measuring haulage performance and identifying areas of haulage improvement, including being able to automatically compare the actual values out of their fleet management systems (FMS) with calculated values, straight after the haulage route is complete on a consistent basis.

With HaaS, miners have increased operational agility to undertake haulage calculations from any location, according to the company. Because there is no desktop application, the calculations can be delivered via the web or mobile apps instantly.

Mathews said RPMGlobal’s cloud-enabled SaaS solutions help to solve several key industry challenges, including the problem of siloed data.

“With HaaS, data is no longer trapped within individual desktop applications or siloed with individual users,” he said. “This cloud-enabled approach enables operations to get the best overall haulage performance right across their operations irrespective of where the users or applications calling the cloud service are physically located.

“Mining is a dynamic and fluid environment, often making it difficult to benchmark the performance of trucks. Miners have had to use key performance indicators such as Effective Flat Haul in an attempt to normalise data. HaaS addresses this challenge by allowing miners to compare every haul against a benchmark calculated value.”

Mathews concluded: “If there can be one positive thing to come out of the global challenges of COVID-19 it is an understanding that companies need to be able to operate their businesses remotely no matter where their people are physically located, and being able to utilise SaaS applications means they can do exactly that.”