Tag Archives: mine scheduling

More miners closing the gap between planning and execution, RPMGlobal says

Automation, Communications in mining, IoT, Mining services, Mining software, , , , ,

RPMGlobal says it is experiencing exponential growth of its advanced mine planning and scheduling software XECUTE® and XPAC® Solutions.

The 2019 financial year has seen a significant increase in the industry’s adoption of XECUTE as more miners begin to reap the benefits of closing the gap between planning and execution, according to RPM.

Over recent months, this has seen the company add several new XECUTE customers in what has been the fastest uptake of a new solution RPM has experienced in many years, it said. This has been across a range of commodities (oil sands, coal, copper, iron ore and gold).

The software is already used extensively around the world across various commodities and mining methods, with the significant growth in sales of these products attributable to both their innovative nature and the fact more organisations are starting to realise the “power connected solutions can deliver to their planning functions”, the company said.

XECUTE is RPM’s short-term scheduling solution to enable miners to maximise planning value by using intelligent integration to connect planning with operations. It uses a highly visual user interface to enhance communication between mining specialists, according to the company.

“XECUTE supports this by providing short-term work assignments to HPGPS and Fleet Management systems. The dynamic integration then allows the solution to bring back the ‘actuals’ (from those systems) to view what work was done and compare it spatially to the shift plan,” the company said.

“XECUTE takes guidance from longer schedules ensuring that operations are always working towards the strategic goal of the longer-term planners. Short-term planners then have a rich visual compliance tool, overlying longer-term guidance, the short-term plan and actual operations all in one 4D environment.”

XPAC, meanwhile, is made up of pre-defined logic, which, when combined with the tacit knowledge of mining engineers, automatically determines what is practically possible to achieve across one or many mining operations, according to the company. This agility gives engineers the ability to respond rapidly to the market and maximise output delivering shareholder value.

The schedules developed in the latest version of XPAC can be passed directly to XECUTE and, likewise, any changes made within XECUTE can be passed back to XPAC to update the short-term schedule, ensuring a seamless scheduling interchange and more importantly, far easier analysis of plan compliance, RPM said.

One of the major differentiators of RPM’s scheduling tools is the Integrated Product Optimiser (PO). Product Optimiser is a mathematical algorithm that determines the optimal allocation of material to destinations through the mining supply chain.

RPM says: “Unlike other scheduling packages, PO is integrated with the schedule to find the optimal way to process, blend and stockpile products to maximise value from what is about to be mined. Mining organisations tend to have very sophisticated supply chain operations which makes it difficult to produce a specific blend at any given point.

“PO optimises the process by determining the single best solution with all of the material available at any given point in time with the goal to maximise the net present value,” the company said. It can therefore have a significant role in reducing stockpile costs by providing the ability to define the requirements of the blend before the port.

XECUTE has, as its foundation, RPM’s Enterprise Planning Framework™, with enterprise data feeds providing planners with the most up-to-date scheduling inputs to be automatically pushed to downstream systems.

RPM CEO, Richard Mathews, said: “The mining industry is focused on plan compliance and driving more predictability into their planning processes. Not only because of the cost savings available to them but because predictable operations are also safer ones.

“To create XECUTE, we listened to the market, worked with key players and delivered a solution that can align horizons, optimise the plan with the supply chain, and connect planning/maintenance and production as well as delivering a visually rich compliance tool.

“As we move increasingly toward autonomy, solutions such as XECUTE are vital. With more automation comes less human intervention, with better data collection and integration comes better execution and with better execution better outcomes are realised.”

He concluded: “The investment we have made into enterprise integration over the last seven years is really paying dividends to both RPM and the industry.”

ABB closes the short interval control and scheduling loop

Automation, Communications in mining, Equipment maintenance, IoT, Mine surveying, Mining equipment, Mining services, Mining software, , , , , , , , ,

ABB, in collaboration with Boliden AB and ArcelorMittal Mining Canada, has launched ABB Ability™ Operations Management System (OMS) for mining, a system that “connects and coordinates mine operators, workforce, equipment and all mining activities in real-time, from face preparation to crusher”.

OMS maximises coordination between weekly production plans and dynamic situations in the mine to improve efficiency, increase productivity and maximise profitability, according to the company.

The company explained: “Mine planners often have to build a short-term plan with limited visibility of ongoing activities in the mine. While mine operators constantly consider and evaluate a complex set of operational constraints, adjusting to ever-changing, day-to-day and hour-to-hour situations. This can impact operational efficiency and raise costs.”

ABB says the integration of short interval control and closed loop scheduling into a single digital platform, ABB’s OMS, will improve responsiveness to unplanned events and reduce production variability through all the mine stages.

The ABB Ability OMS can present ‘what-if’ scenarios in case of task failure or operational change, helping mine operators and planners make better decisions faster, ensuring ongoing operation of the mine and increased productivity, it said. Equipment availability is also improved by moving from a reactive to a predictive maintenance model, according to ABB. “Through all the stages of the production cycle, the production flow from the mine is maximised.”

Eduardo Lima, Product Manager for Integrated Mine Operations at ABB, said: “Although it may seem simple, the coordination between the tactical plan and the operational plan is one of the top challenges faced in modern mining. By offering advanced short-term planning and increased automation, ABB Ability Operations Management System enables the mine to act as an ore factory.”

He added: “Ore inventory can be tracked and controlled to allow maximum flow and optimal grade. By integrating operational technology and information technology, operational awareness is increased for all personnel.

“Staff see the same information at the same time and can jointly decide what actions to take in real time with no need to wait until the end of the shift.”

Short interval control application allows mine operators to monitor and review operational plans and performance based on targets, metrics and key performance indicators. Variances can be analysed and mitigated in real time during a shift for immediate corrective action.

The closed loop scheduling application, meanwhile, combines high-level planning with low-level control through a “heuristic auto-scheduling algorithm”. ABB said: “This allows mine planners to achieve new levels of production scheduling efficiency from bench preparation to crusher, optimising resource usage in real time and following the production plan more effectively.”

In developing ABB Ability OMS with ABB, project teams at both ArcelorMittal Mining Canada’s Integrated Remote Operations Center and the Boliden Mine Operation Center provided operation expertise, existing infrastructure and dedicated resources support, ABB says. The technology was piloted at Boliden’s Renstrom underground mine, in Sweden, and by ArcelorMittal at the Mont-Wright open-pit mine, in Canada.

The ABB Ability OMS is part of the ABB Ability MineOptimize portfolio of digitally connected products, services and solutions aimed at enabling modern mines to “maximise visibility, reliability, productivity and energy efficiency and optimise performance”.

RPMGlobal XECUTEs another mine planning and scheduling software update

Automation, Base metals, Coal technology, Communications in mining, Energy minerals, Industrial minerals, Mining services, Mining software, Precious metals, Steel and iron ore, , , , , ,

XECUTE is the latest in RPMGlobal’s extensive line of mine planning and scheduling software solutions to receive an update.

XECUTE 1.10 builds on the core capabilities of XECUTE and features advanced upgrades to improve the live planning environment. This uses “enterprise enablement” to deliver real inter-departmental collaboration, according to RPMGlobal.

XECUTE was designed to bridge the gap between short-term planning and operational execution and has been adopted at several sites globally, RPMGlobal says.

The latest updates have seen the product integrated with MinVu, a suite of products the company acquired earlier this year.

When the MinVu acquisition was announced in December 2017, RPMGlobal said XECUTE would “be able to immediately utilise the MinVu integration adaptors to bring back data such as Equipment GPS coordinates, actual bucket positions, material movements, drill hole details, actual production rates and incorporate them into the production plan. This will extend the functionality of XECUTE whilst increasing the number of modules in the RPM suite.”

MinVu’s ability to pull this data directly from areas where it would otherwise remain in silos, means manual data processes are eliminated and users spend less time gathering and manipulating data and producing reports, according to RPMGlobal.

MinVu, itself, received an update last month focused on integration with the Australia-headquartered company’s Enterprise Planning Framework.

RPMGlobal has also started to build XECUTE into an augmented reality environment on iPads, iPhones and Android devices, according to Michael Baldwin, Executive General Manager of Product Strategy.

“This means you can access the information on mobile devices regardless of your physical location, which is often a problem with remote mining operations. This also allows for clear communication of the plan, including any updates to the plan,” he said.

The latest release also sees new scheduling functionality, including upgrades to the integrated product optimiser as well as user interface improvements that make the live planning a better overall user experience, according to the company.

XECUTE aims to minimises data entry and maximise planning value and adaptability by using automation to connect planning with operations, with 3D cross-team collaboration and integrated design and scheduling, according to RPM Global.

The system combines RPMGlobal’s proprietary Product Optimiser with a game-inspired 3D interface. Enterprise data feeds provide planners with the most up-to-date schedule inputs, allowing outputs to be automatically pushed to downstream systems and closing the loop between planning and execution.

RPMGlobal said: “The companies that have adopted XECUTE have realised the potential of a collaborative, live planning environment and the improvements this could bring to their mining operation.”

Minemax’s Tempo 3.0.4 offers open-pit mines further mineral value chain modelling

Base metals, Bulk handling, Coal technology, Communications in mining, Mineral processing, Mining software, Precious metals, Steel and iron ore, ,

Minemax believes the enhanced BZ-based scheduling engine of its open-pit mine planning software, Tempo 3.0.4, will find favour with its Minemax Software Manager (MSM) users, delivering high-value schedules quicker than before.

The new version of Tempo is now available to all maintained and subscribed users through MSM.

The Tempo 3.0 release in September 2017 marked the first time BZ-based scheduling (the Bienstock-Zuckerberg algorithm) was available in a commercial mine scheduling solution, according to Minemax.

Since that time, Minemax has extended the scope of Tempo’s BZ-based scheduling to include multiple alternative material destinations, trucking, both block and polygon scheduling and, most recently, products.

“New product and product attribute charts and tabular reports are now available in Tempo 3.0.4. Products, along with their associated attributes, constraints and reports, enable you to more completely model your mineral value chain,” the company said.

For example, in iron ore, products can be used for lump and fines, each with their own prices and blending constraints. In coal, products can be used to combine the outputs of both wash plant and by-pass processing options into multiple saleable blended products. With metals mining, products are used to satisfy monthly metal targets resulting from multiple processing options.

While Minemax believes BZ-based mine scheduling can deliver high-value schedules quickly, the company is also providing a MILP (mixed integer linear programming) “solver option as well for polygon-cut scheduling in Tempo” for those that are yet to be convinced.