RPMGlobal has delivered a brand-new optimisation solution with the release of a multi-site, multi-period optimiser that, it says, evaluates capital investment strategies and mine plans of multiple operations to maximise the net present value (NPV) of an entire mining organisation.

RPM’s Enterprise Optimiser has been built from the ground up, leveraging and building upon algorithms, libraries, and intellectual property within RPM’s software suite, the company explained. It has been designed so that EO can look at a mining organisation in its entirety and inform capital investment decisions while also optimising the strategic mining schedule.

The company explained: “Current offerings generally look to optimise the NPV of individual mining operations, but they fail to recognise that those sites are often connected. Optimising connected mining operations is essential to ensuring the use of shared infrastructure and competing contractual requirements (that impact each operation differently) are taken into consideration. This needs to happen because the best option for one operation does not necessarily provide the best outcome for the organisation as a whole.”

RPM’s Enterprise Optimiser is capable of handling very large, multi-operation models and can blend products not only at site but also at other points along the route, including the port, according to RPM. It achieves this very quickly, making it possible to study more alternatives to maximise the organisation’s NPV and production capacity.

RPM’s Chief Executive Officer, Richard Mathews, says the product solves a challenge that all multi-site organisations have attempted to solve for decades.

“Our new Enterprise Optimiser optimises the key objectives of the organisation across individual mine sites and considers both the mining and processing operations at the same time,” he said. “This is critical in understanding not only how the individual mine plans are related but also where the organisation gets the greatest return for shareholders from their invested capital.”

Users can evaluate multiple strategic options across an organisation including potential capital investments, according to the company.

“What makes EO so powerful is the way we combine all of the different factors into a single model that looks at the entire problem across multiple mine sites,” Mathews said. “It can assess the final products being exported from one or more ports while considering all of the logistics between the mine and the port.”

EO doesn’t look to just optimise across a single period or the short-term horizon, but rather to optimise across the entire life of the mine in one go. It does this for each operation simultaneously, including the mine schedule and processing plant. Throughout the process it considers the operational structure of the company so it can maximise the NPV across the whole organisation, RPM says.

“EO is entirely process-driven, removing the need for complex scripting while providing ease of use and visualisation of the optimised schedule,” RPM said. “This process-driven approach makes it very simple to configure reserve models and then model key factors such as mining rates, costs and revenues. The user can define complex sequencing rules and constraints while defining objectives and product specifications. EO then allows users to analyse and visualise scheduling outcomes which will determine the optimum NPV.”

EO can be used across any commodity, mining method and any number of sites, the company claims. While it is a standalone product and can be used to optimise schedules and reserves from most mining packages, there are integration advantages when paired with RPM’s scheduling solutions, RPM said.

EO is integrated with RPM’s Enterprise Planning Framework (EPF) with users having access to features such as the model repository so that they can share and edit models. EPF also has the industry’s largest independent equipment library, corporate governance and enterprise security among its numerous advantages, RPM explained.