Tag Archives: Richard Mathews

RPMGlobal looks to maximise mining company NPV with Enterprise Optimiser

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.

RPMGlobal acquires three mine planning optimisation software products from MIRARCO

RPMGlobal has announced a further software product acquisition after entering a collaborative research partnership with Canada-based MIRARCO.

The agreement gives RPM ownership of three mine planning optimisation software products that will strengthen its Design and Scheduling product suites, in particular the SOT product, RPM said.

The acquisition is part of a three-year collaborative research partnership with MIRARCO, an innovative solution research provider for the mining industry and research arm of Laurentian University based in Sudbury, Canada.

MIRARCO was instrumental in the original research leading to the development of RPM’s Schedule Optimisation Tool (SOT). SOT, along with Attain and Surface SOT, were products acquired by RPM as part of its July 2020 acquisition of Revolution Mining Software.

RPM CEO and Managing Director, Richard Mathews, said: “We are very proud that MIRARCO continues to place their trust in RPM to further develop and commercialise these important optimisation programs.”

One of MIRARCO’s core research domains is furthering the research and development of decision support software for the mining industry.

MIRARCO has developed three separate but complementary underground mine planning optimisation products, which RPM has, under this agreement, agreed to acquire and commercialise. These products extend and complement the functionality of RPM’s mine optimisation software solutions in the areas of Advanced Valuation, GeoSequencing, and Ventilation, it said.

As part of a strategic multi-year collaboration arrangement, RPM and MIRARCO will continue to work together on research and development projects that deliver demonstrable and innovative solutions for the mining industry.

The Advanced Valuation Module (AVM) facilitates the generation of optimised underground mine plans that can deal with the effects of uncertain product prices and ore grades. The mine planner specifies distributions for product prices over the mine’s life and ore grades. AVM will then optimise the life-of-mine schedule, maximising the operation’s net present value (NPV).

The GeoSequencing Module (GSM) facilitates the generation of optimised underground mine schedules adhering to stope sequencing constraints motivated by geotechnical considerations. The mine planner selects the rules for stope sequencing and GSM automatically generates alternative sets of stope-to-stope dependencies, or GeoSequencing scenarios, while enforcing the selected rules. The output is an NPV-optimised life-of-mine schedule based on the mine’s geotechnical considerations.

The Ventilation Constraint Module (VCM) generates optimised underground mine schedules based on ventilation constraints. Through interaction with a ventilation solver, VCM automatically generates airflow-based constraints on the equipment for each ventilation district. Using these constraints, VCM generates optimised NPV life-of-mine schedules that are feasible from a ventilation perspective.

Mathews added: “This acquisition is strategically important for two reasons. First, it further supports our commitment to delivering real innovation to the industry through the ongoing investment and collaboration with the leading minds within key research and development institutes such as MIRARCO. Secondly, it continues our commitment to owning and further investing in the development of innovative strategic mine optimisation solutions particularly for our underground mining clients.

“With the completion of this transaction, RPM is now the proud owner of nine underground mine planning software optimisation products that are used by software suppliers to the mining industry particularly in the underground space to build optimised underground life of mine plans.”

Mathews said the company started acquiring and developing underground mine optimisation products back in August 2017, starting with the acquisition of MineOptima (borne out of research of the Network Optimisation Group at the University of Melbourne) and then in July 2020 with the acquisition of Revolution Mining (borne out of research of MIRARCO) and now with MIRARCO once again.

Dr Nadia Mykytczuk, Interim President and CEO of MIRARCO and Executive Director of the Goodman School of Mines, said: “RPM’s global reach and drive to deliver innovative technology solutions for the mining industry make them a perfect industry partner for MIRARCO. We are looking forward to building on our already strong partnership and collaboration with RPM over the next three years and beyond.”

RPMGlobal to create Emissions Management Software solution with Eden Suite deal

RPMGlobal (RPM) has entered into an agreement with Eden Suite Pty Ltd to acquire a copy of its Environmental Data Management and Reporting Software, Eden Suite.

This acquisition provides RPM with the exclusive worldwide rights to the intellectual property in the Eden Suite software for use in the mining and quarrying industries, along with the ability to extend and integrate the use of the software inside RPM’s suite of software products, it said.

This latest announcement follows closely from the recent acquisitions by RPM of two environmental, social and governance (ESG) consulting and advisory businesses – Blueprint Environmental Strategies and Nitro Solutions.

This acquisition, RPMGlobal says, is strategically important as it will be the first software solution within a brand-new Sustainability vertical in the technology division.

Richard Mathews, RPMGlobal’s CEO, stated, “RPM’s ESG consulting and advisory division has an enviable reputation in ESG matters and the establishment of a dedicated technology vertical focused on ESG technology will further bolster their credentials.

“RPM has a lot of ESG capability already built into its software products to address topics such as emissions simulation, disturbance scheduling/reporting and avoidance zoning. This strategic acquisition provides RPM’s mining customers with a proven ESG focused solution that has been specifically built and tailored for the sole purposes of supporting users with their environmental management and reporting requirements.”

Eden Suite has been supporting carbon management for almost 10 years and was initially developed to capture the fundamental mechanics of annual emissions reporting. This capability can also be applied to the annual National Pollutant Inventories (NPI) and other regulatory greenhouse gas emission reporting requirements. It does this by streamlining the capture of usages for anything that creates an emission output for an organisation, RPMGlobal explained. Usages of emissions sources can be manually entered or automatically integrated through direct data linkages.

The solution has been designed to make it easier for organisations to proactively track, forecast and subsequently report their emissions outputs.

“One of the major challenges faced by miners with emissions reporting is that of data capture, which is a critical component of the regulatory reporting framework,” the company said. “Eden Suite is configured to mirror how an organisation operates. Data is captured in a manner allowing for auditability and transparency, ensuring material disclosures in relation to carbon are accurately calculated and reported.”

RPM’s Emissions Management solution will be entirely web-based, and cloud delivered and is configured to reflect an organisation’s asset hierarchy. Inputs are then measured by vehicle, fleet or at an individual asset level allowing granular reporting and flexibility of changes which is important for historical and auditable reporting.

Mathews continued: “Mining organisations are being required to undertake an increasing amount of time-sensitive statutory reporting for ESG and this can no longer be reliably delivered through the use of Excel spreadsheets. With the RPM Emissions Management Software solution, a site or an entire organisation can generate annualised emissions submissions that can be summarised into daily emissions trends per activity or even source. Having a solution with real-time data capture allows mining clients to proactively monitor and manage their progress across Scope 1, 2 and 3 inventories.”

Eden Suite’s CEO, Peter Robertson, stated: “RPM is ideally positioned within the mining industry to further the growth of this software solution within that market. RPM is an industry leader in the mining consulting and advisory space and has a proven track record developing and integrating technology. We are pleased to have such a strong partnership with such a respected and progressive company.”

RPMGlobal extends haulage vehicle simulation to green hydrogen, hybrid-diesel power

RPMGlobal says it has further advanced its simulation platform to support hybrid vehicles that are powered by green hydrogen or hybrid diesel.

The hybrid vehicle functionality, developed in partnership with Tier-One miners and OEMs within the mining industry, enables users to simulate and test multiple scenarios including vehicles that use hydrogen or hybrid diesel. This is particularly useful for organisations looking to decarbonise their mining operations and are looking for a way to quantify potential options, the company said.

RPM’s simulation solutions use a Discrete Event Simulation engine that has been specifically designed for the mining industry. Organisations typically build a base case simulation they use as a yardstick to measure any changes to the haulage network, road rules, mine layout or vehicles.

Richard Mathews, Chief Executive Officer of RPMGlobal, said the demand for HAULSIM and SIMULATE has been strong. “RPM is experiencing a significant increase in organisations needing to measure and quantify the financial and emission benefits of utilising electric, hydrogen or hybrid diesel alternatives to their traditional diesel fleet.

“The global decarbonisation effort has certainly created demand for RPM’s unique simulation solutions that can assist with answering questions that you simply can’t answer in a spreadsheet.

“RPM’s Commercial Off-The-Shelf simulation solutions are already used worldwide by miners, contractors and OEMs. With mining companies across the world pledging to quantifiably improve their decarbonisation efforts towards net-zero targets, software solutions that can measure and quantify the potential benefits of using lower emission options that are available in the market are super important.”

This latest software release also includes several other developments such as interaction rules for autonomous vehicles, upgrades to electric vehicle infrastructure simulations, additional microservices to evaluate alternative options remotely (server or cloud) and more detailed reporting for electric vehicles.

With this release, RPM is offering usage of the software and training free of charge to anyone taking part in the Charge On Innovation Challenge to support participants in delivering innovative decarbonisation solutions, it said. This challenge came about as a result of BHP, Rio Tinto, Vale and Austmine recognising that the mining industry needs to be at the forefront of tackling climate change. The Charge On Innovation Challenge is aimed at encouraging innovative technology development that will support the mining industry’s decarbonisation efforts.

RPMGlobal establishes Asset Management Centre to address AMT software demand

RPMGlobal has announced the opening of its Asset Management Centre of excellence in Perth, Western Australia, which has been developed to, the company says, address the rapid growth and demand of/for the company’s AMT software suite.

The centre brings together personnel with a diverse range of skills focused on best practice in the asset management space, with the centre having a particular focus on supporting clients and projects in Western Australia.

AMT is RPMGlobal’s asset management software which helps mining companies, contractors, OEMs and their dealers effectively manage their assets using a “unique” Dynamic Life Cycle Costing engine.

Since early 2021, RPMGlobal says it has been recruiting heavily for asset management specialists to cater for additional deployment and support skills to enhance and support the delivery of current and future demand of their asset management suite of solutions.

According to Richard Mathews, RPMGlobal CEO, the decision to base the centre in Perth made sense on several fronts.

“Perth became an obvious choice due to the highly sought-after skills and experience of the recruitment pool as well as the time zone with a number of our bigger customers and users of the software,” he said.

RPMGlobal claims to have secured a marked increase in new organisations using the software in the last 12 months and is making room for a heightened period of growth, in particular from its Western Australia customers.

“Perth makes sense not just for Western Australia but also several globally strategic projects,” Mathews said. “We are expanding for what is a significant period of growth across our business, particularly in the AMT space.”

The upward trajectory builds on a big 2020 for the Perth team where a major renovation of RPMGlobal’s Perth office was completed, adding another floor and unveiling a dedicated Customer Experience Centre to support the company’s growth in the local market.

Mathews said this latest period of accelerated growth across its Western Australia customer base is in line with securing major sales and accelerating development of new products and services.

“Our intention is always to have a very strong local support network for our customers and the increased investment in our Perth footprint is a strong reflection of that commitment,” he said.

The company’s organic expansion coincides with a period of increased market confidence and positive industry outlook, coupled with a sharp focus on innovation from major mining companies, RPMGlobal says.

Mathews added: “It’s certainly an exciting time for the mining industry and we have seen Perth, in particular, emerge as a digital and innovation mining hub.

“Our Perth Asset Management Centre demonstrates our strong commitment to the region and providing our growing customer base with technology solutions that unlock long-term value across the mining value chain.”

RPMGlobal’s SaaS model enhanced with IMAFS and Shift Manager cloud-based transitions

RPMGlobal says it has accelerated the transition of its product suite to the cloud, releasing two new cloud offerings to the market.

The company’s IMAFS™ inventory optimisation and Shift Manager™ operational management solutions have now made the transition, the company said.

IMAFS uses artificial intelligence-based algorithms to enhance inventory management and forecasting accuracy for miners. It connects to an organisations ERP, enabling operations to continuously improve the accuracy of parts availability, reduce inventories, decrease stockouts and reduce equipment downtimes, according to the company.

Transitioning IMAFS from a hosted solution in the cloud to a full Software as a Service (SaaS) model will provide users with greater flexibility in security and authentication, RPMGlobal claims. As a result of the shift to the cloud, customers can now continuously optimise their inventory management processes.

“The move to the cloud has as an array of benefits, including increased ease of use, as users now only need a browser to access the IMAFS software,” RPMGlobal says. “Other benefits include high levels of scalability and availability, a modern API interface, faster deployment time and improved cost effectiveness.”

Shift Manager, meanwhile, is a short-term task planning and execution solution that enables users to collaborate and communicate through a single, integrated plan. The software allows users to manage tasks and resource allocations to drive more effective on-shift decision making and greater compliance to plan, according to the company.

As a cloud-enabled hosted solution, users are able to execute short-term shift planning through a single, integrated, web-based application without the need to be physically on site, the company says. Other benefits include enhanced security and collaboration across departments and a rapid implementation methodology that includes several pre-built integration points.

RPMGlobal Chief Technology Officer, Paul Beesley, says cloud adoption will help the industry unlock additional productivity and sustainability improvements.

“Cloud applications facilitate remote collaboration and the scalability that mining organisations require while creating robust data storage solutions that are more cost-efficient when compared to outdated hardware,” he said.

“Our products have been designed to leverage the tools and services available on the cloud platforms to rapidly build enhanced solutions for our customers. The transition to a full cloud offering across our full product portfolio is being enabled due to our above industry average investment in research and development and we look forward to continuing our progress in releasing more cloud offerings to the market soon.”

RPMGlobal Chief Executive Officer, Richard Mathews, added: “The company is committed to investing in technical innovation to enable customers to operate their mines as efficiently as possible.

“With more customers adopting a remote-operating business strategy through technology enablement, our work to migrate other products to a complete SaaS model will ramp up as we strive to add additional value for our present and future customers.”

RPMGlobal adds electric vehicles to the HaaS simulation mix

RPMGlobal says it has further advanced its environmental, social and governance (ESG) software capabilities following the completion of enhancements to its Haulage as a Service (HaaS) simulation product to incorporate support for electric vehicles.

In addition, the company is planning to add hydrogen haulage vehicle technology into the mix later.

As a cloud enabled, service-orientated approach to haulage analysis, HaaS provides mining companies with the capability to undertake haulage calculations in a cloud environment, according to RPM.

The introduction of electric vehicle support will allow users to model energy usage and regenerative braking within HaaS, providing users with the ability to complete travel time calculations programmatically in a cloud-based environment.

RPMGlobal’s investment in both cloud and sustainability has increased significantly in the past year, culminating in the latest release of HaaS. HaaS, which was the first RPMGlobal solution to be released as a true Software as a Service offering, is a native cloud application that gives miners increased operational agility to undertake haulage calculations from any location, the company explained.

RPMGlobal Chief Executive Officer, Richard Mathews, said the latest release further demonstrated the company’s commitment to support mining organisations on their journey towards environmentally responsible operations.

“RPMGlobal is focused on contributing towards a sustainable future for the people and organisations that we work with and it is great to see the advancements that our software is contributing to in this space,” he said.

With hydrogen now viewed as having an important role to play in the industry’s bid to decarbonise through the integration of hydrogen fuel cell vehicles, the next step for RPMGlobal’s haulage simulation platforms will be the introduction of hydrogen vehicle technology to the mix. Foundation work has already started on the offering, with completion planned later this calendar year, the company said.

“This new functionality will allow organisations to simulate hydrogen-powered vehicles and run scenarios with the specific characteristics of the new hydrogen technology,” RPM said. “The simulation platform will then provide a way to assess options and scenarios for diesel, electric or hydrogen powered vehicles in any combination.”

Mathews views the platform as critical capability for mining organisations and original equipment manufacturers as they search for ways to remove reliance on fossil fuels in mining.

“As more and more organisations commit to emission reduction targets, it will be critical to have software that can simulate different outcomes based on what combination of diesel-, electric- or hydrogen-powered vehicles are deployed within the mining operation and allow users to quantify the results of each scenario in a way that assists them to make the best decisions inclusive of sustainability considerations,” he said.

An increasing number of miners have formally set emissions targets while the majors have committed to reach net-zero emissions by 2050.

Many of the plans to reach these decarbonisation commitments have an element that focuses on haulage of material and the shift from diesel to alternative energy sources that are more sustainable, according to Mathews.

“Whether an organisation is looking to battery-electric vehicles, hydrogen, or trolley infrastructure as a greener alternative, our intent is to ensure RPMGlobal’s simulation solutions can support and enhance those decisions into the future,” he said.

The company added electric vehicle support to its haulage simulation platforms, HAULSIM and SIMULATE, back in May.

RPMGlobal establishes dedicated ESG mining division with acquisition of Nitro Solutions

RPMGlobal is set to boost its environmental, social and governance (ESG) offering with the addition of Australia-headquartered Nitro Solutions Pty Ltd.

The two companies have entered into an acquisition agreement whereby RPMGlobal will buy the privately-owned ESG services company.

“Nitro is a company that provides the mining industry with a quality-focused ESG service in the areas of environmental approvals, impact assessment, regulatory advice, environmental audits, compliance reporting (due diligence) and environmental economics, policy & legislation advice,” RPMGlobal said.

This acquisition will be the catalyst to bring together RPMGlobal’s ESG professionals, who are based across the globe, into one division to be headed by Ngaire Tranter, the current CEO and founder of Nitro.

RPMGlobal Chief Executive Officer, Richard Mathews, said the acquisition and the inclusion of the Nitro team combined with RPMGlobal’s existing ESG capabilities would see the company form a dedicated ESG division.

“While our mining advisory ESG professionals have been engaged to perform and manage numerous ESG mandates around the world, until now, we have not had a dedicated division focused solely on ESG,” he said.

“Ngaire and her team have an excellent reputation within the mining ESG market which gives us great confidence that we can build a world-class, mining-focused ESG business leveraging an ESG team that knows and understands mining from the ground up.”

Commenting on the acquisition, Tranter said she was proud of the business her team had built over the last six years and was looking forward to continuing to help mining companies take action to improve their ESG performance.

“Alongside the speed of ESG adoption, the opportunity to be part of a larger organisation with a global footprint allows us to assist the mining industry with the increasing requirements in this space right around the world,” she said. “It’s clear that RPMGlobal is passionate about building a premier mining ESG business supported by state-of-the-art software products, and I, together with the rest of the team, really look forward to joining RPMGlobal on this exciting journey.”

With most major and mid-tier miners around the globe having accelerated their efforts to meet decarbonisation targets in parallel with a broader societal commitment to achieve net-zero emissions by 2050, RPMGlobal says it has been drawing on its leading technology and the Advisory teams’ strong expertise to deliver a range of ESG-focused services.

“With organisations globally rising to the challenge of meeting increasing sustainability demands placed upon their organisations and operations, I see the merger of Nitro with RPMGlobal as an important step forward to supporting mining companies in their quest to meet decarbonisation, governance and social licence to operate requirements,” Tranter said.

Mathews said this was just the start of RPMGlobal’s ESG journey as the company plans to grow its ESG division with mining services capabilities through a range of organic and non-organic strategies.

“We also intend to harness the deep ESG domain knowledge of the Nitro team to assist RPMGlobal’s technology division identify software products we can either acquire, or alternatively build to service this accelerating market segment,” he said.

The acquisition is expected to close on June 30, 2021, subject to satisfaction of a number of conditions precedent and customary completion events.

RPMGlobal seeks to align short- and long-term mine planning with Attain

RPMGlobal has broadened its software optimisation suite with the launch of Attain, a solution that, the company says, helps mine planners maintain alignment between their long-term and short-term production schedules and improve the net present value (NPV) of their operations.

The company explained: “The dynamic nature of mining operations creates a high degree of uncertainty across many different elements. Unexpected events often arise which require mine planners to reschedule their mine plan. Should the short-term mine plan deviate too far off course from the long-term plan then value can be eroded by the failure to achieve the strategic long-term goals.”

Attain is a software solution that solves the challenge of mine planning horizon misalignment by ensuring operational mine planning is systematically aligned with the long-term plan, resulting in optimised short-term schedules and improved NPV, RPMGlobal claims.

Once a schedule becomes misaligned with the longer-term plan, Attain will produce feasible, optimised short-range schedules aligned with the long-range schedule. These alternatives are offered to the mine planner who is then able to review and selects the preferred short-range schedule.

Attain targets the two-to-six-month planning horizon and builds a short-term schedule that considers the actual results to-date while maintaining alignment with the long-term plan, it says.

“With a highly intuitive user interface, the user simply selects their preferred long-term plan which then becomes Attain’s optimisation objective,” RPMGlobal added.

RPMGlobal Chief Executive Officer, Richard Mathews, said: “Short-term planners are always reacting to events that cause a deviation from the mine plan but they often don’t have a way of knowing what the unintended consequences of the resulting re-planning decisions are on the life of the mine.

“With Attain, users can make informed decisions while adjusting the short-term plan knowing that the long-term plan objectives are being met. Attain complements all mine planning tools and processes that mining operations use.”

Mathews said the team were excited to launch the Attain solution to the market and would be seeking feedback from early adopters to prioritise future development.

RPMGlobal introduces ‘industry first’ Hybrid Scheduling tool to XPAC Solutions

RPMGlobal has unveiled its next evolution of mine scheduling software with the latest release of its leading suite of scheduling products, XPAC Solutions.

The latest release includes speed and performance upgrades and functionality and architectural improvements designed to provide the user with additional agility.

However, it is the introduction of Hybrid Scheduling in XPAC 3.1 that is already generating excitement, according to the company.

Hybrid Scheduling is, RPM claims, an industry first that provides users with the flexibility of manual scheduling, together with the time savings and ease of automated scheduling.

For many years, XPAC Solutions have allowed users to start scheduling manually then seamlessly transition to automatic scheduling at any point. With Hybrid Scheduling, users can define the high-level strategy, such as the timing of shovel moves or opening of a new pit and leave the AutoScheduler to work out the detail.

The Hybrid Scheduling functionality includes a major update to the user interface that completely turns the traditional iterative scheduling workflow on its head, according to RPM.

Users no longer need to process the entire schedule every time they make an adjustment to the configuration. They can now step through the schedule incrementally, pausing at key milestones and refining the schedule as they go.

With most scheduling software products on the market requiring users to choose one of either manual or automatic mode, XPAC Solutions’ Hybrid Scheduling functionality gives mine planners the best of both worlds – the ability to schedule both manually and automatically which can be used across all solutions in any combination, RPM says.

RPMGlobal Chief Technology Officer, Paul Beesley, said the release of XPAC 3.1 represented a major step-change in the industry’s approach to planning and scheduling.

“XPAC Solutions 3.1 gives mine planners more flexibility and capability than ever before which is critical for the dynamic environment in which mines operate,” he said.

“Key scheduling decisions can be made manually, while the detail of how those decisions will be achieved is determined automatically. Importantly, all three methods are performed simultaneously in an interactive, highly visual environment that integrates 3D animation, Gantt charts and task sequences.

“Planners can pause the schedule at any point and visualise the status of the mine and key equipment so it’s much faster to build practical, efficient dig sequences for all major equipment.”

The latest upgrade to XPAC Solutions includes major speed and performance enhancements across the process. Data compaction and caching techniques make it much faster to load complex 3D data into memory and virtually eliminates any further delays when the plot is revisited, the company says.

Among other improvements, the new version allows delays associated with equipment relocations to be inserted automatically with durations based on the distance that must be travelled.