Tag Archives: Richard Mathews

RPMGlobal provides a remote MinVu

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

RPMGlobal says a new dedicated app is set to transform the way miners collaborate, receive and analyse information.

The launch of the MinVu Shift Manager app comes as the industry continues to adopt mobile technology to increase operational efficiency and collaboration in an “inherently dispersed and complex environment”, RPMGlobal said.

Richard Mathews, RPMGlobal CEO, said making MinVu Shift Manager compatible with mobile would provide real-time data directly in the hands of the decision maker, wherever they are located.

“RPMGlobal has listened closely to our customers and we know that miners are continually looking for ways to leverage digital solutions in order to optimise and streamline the way they work,” he said.

“Shift Manager is an integral component of the digital mine and a connected workforce, so it made sense to make this web-based software available in the form of an app to enable planning and supervision form anywhere.”

MinVu Shift Manager is a short-term planning and execution solution, which RPMGlobal acquired at the end of 2017. The tool is a unique industry-built software solution that enables users to collaborate and communicate through a single, integrated plan to drive more effective on-shift decision support, according to the company.

“The new mobile interface merges MinVu and MinVu Shift Manager into one, easy-to-use platform,” RPMGlobal said. “With the app, different departments and personnel have complete visibility of equipment and equipment status, underpinning the ability to plan intra-shift activities and break through operational silos.”

As remote-enabled solutions, both MinVu and MinVu Shift Manager enable remote teams to collaborate across the value chain, it added.

Users will be able to create any Shift Manager task in the app, such as addressing a possible hazard, checking the progress of diggers and schedule maintenance tasks. Importantly, end users can collaborate and share information from anywhere, whether they are underground on site or in the corporate headquarters, according to RPMGlobal.

RPMGlobal’s mobile applications now extend across its established suite of integrated solutions, which encompass mine scheduling, simulation, finance, maintenance, operations and design.

XECUTE — RPMGlobal’s short-term scheduling solution — only recently underwent an upgrade of its app, according to the company.

Along with user interface and CAD enhancements, the latest XECUTE release comes equipped with enhanced mobile functionality, thereby supporting the real-time data feeds from fleet management systems, the company said.

Mathews explained: “You will be able to see on the mobile device, not just what your plan is, but also how you’re progressing against that plan in real-time.

“With the app, mining personnel will be connected to vital information at all times. For example, a mine planner who is on the bus heading to site can log in to the XECUTE app and catch up with what has happened on site overnight before he even arrives for the shift.”

According to Mathews, enterprise integration is a key enabler for technology, as is the mobile application stack.

“Mobile compatible software is a key component of the digital mine whereby data is connected from central systems to dispersed mining personnel, therefore amplifying the abilities of key decision makers within a business,” Mathews said.

“With RPMGlobal’s enterprise approach, we are helping mine sites increase productivity across the value chain. We are giving them the tools to make better decisions thereby creating an insight-driven mining organisation.”

RPMGlobal opens fleet management options with TALPAC-3D

Equipment maintenance, IoT, Mining services, Mining software, , , , , ,

RPMGlobal has unveiled a new addition to its suite of mining simulation solutions, launching TALPAC-3D to, it says, help miners unlock greater potential value from operations.

After detailed consultation with the global user base of TALPAC, RPMGlobal released TALPAC-3D to offer an enhanced user experience, increased functionality and a “stepping stone towards RPMGlobal’s other simulation products for those looking for more sophisticated simulation demands”, the company said.

TALPAC-3D harnesses the functionality of RPMGlobal’s Truck and Loader Productivity and Cost calculator —TALPAC—with a gaming-inspired 3D user interface (UI). This makes it easier and more efficient to import data, view results and make changes to models, and in doing so, enhances the ability for users to optimise haulage routes and equipment selection, according to RPMGlobal.

“TALPAC has been trusted by the mining industry for more than four decades for its accuracy and equipment manufacturer independence, delivering best practice simulation for miners, original equipment manufacturer (OEMs), contractors and consultants,” the company said. “Originally developed as a tool to support truck and loader haul route calculations, TALPAC is now used all over the globe with thousands of users.”

TALPAC-3D builds on the extensive history and smarts of TALPAC and applies a brand-new graphical UI, according to the company. RPMGlobal’s strategy has been to provide a much richer user experience across all products with a focus on the UI. This has translated into an upgrade for TALPAC-3D, bringing it in line with the RPMGlobal Intelligent Simulation suite including HAULSIM, the Discrete Event Simulation (DES) solution.

HAULSIM was introduced to the market over six years ago and RPMGlobal has invested significant resources into ensuring the UI focuses on ease of use and intuitive controls across the entire simulation suite, the company said.

RPMGlobal Chief Executive Officer, Richard Mathews, said: “The solution is reflective of the company’s commitment to taking on board client feedback and addressing the industry’s evolving needs.

“While TALPAC has been the de-facto standard for the industry’s simulation needs for more than 40 years, we remain dedicated to introducing new solutions tailored to the requirements of the industry.”

He added: “We realised there was a need for an innovative simulation solution providing the reliable engine of TALPAC but encompassing a fresh, modern UI that was scalable.”

TALPAC-3D also offers a “seamless upgrade path” with integration to HAULSIM, according to RPMGlobal. As users become more sophisticated in their simulation requirements and need more functionality through a DES tool, they can easily upgrade to HAULSIM. This isn’t offered by any competitors in the industry, according to RPM Global.

The 3D UI of TALPAC-3D delivers several new features such as a fleet planner and a cycle time analysis tool that work across the network.

Mathews said: “The industry’s adoption of TALPAC had continued to grow and it was used by miners all over the globe to help them calculate the ideal size of their fleet and understand which machines and sizes of equipment are most compatible.

“As a modern software package, TALPAC-3D makes that work easier than ever before, enabling end-users to rapidly achieve the next level of productivity.

“The world’s biggest miners are consistently looking for ways to unlock greater value from operations. Using TALPAC-3D, mining companies are able to investigate multiple fleet options to optimise productivity.”

RPMGlobal provides asset management add-on for SAP users

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RPMGlobal has launched a new version of its dedicated asset lifecycle costing software, AMT, designed to complement SAP’s Intelligent Asset Management offering and solve the plant and maintenance needs of miners.

In this release of AMT, AMT4SAP will be equipped with over 20 logical business connectors into SAP to support any organisations’ SAP work management solution, RPMGlobal said.

AMT4SAP is an add-on to a miner’s existing SAP solution (pictured) designed to complement and enhance asset management decision support through advanced modelling, maintenance cost budgeting, lifecycle management, benchmarking, component life optimisation and overall strategy optimisation, according to the company.

RPMGlobal and SAP have had a partnership agreement in place since 2013 and have already successfully deployed AMT with SAP to many global mining organisations, RPMGlobal says. These deployments include integration between the solutions that automate the transfer of data to amplify the decision-making capabilities of these organisations.

RPMGlobal CEO, Richard Mathews, said AMT4SAP provides a “complementary and connected solution” to SAP’s maintenance planning (PM), reliability analysis and optimisation functions.

“Miners have complex plant and maintenance needs that AMT4SAP can solve through the creation of a truly holistic approach to asset management. The outcome is long-term performance and cost benefits that positively impact the bottom line,” he said.

At the core of RPMGlobal’s AMT solution is a Dynamic Life Cycle Costing (DLCC) engine and inbuilt intelligence engine. The DLCC takes inputs in real-time from various asset management processes and systems such as on-board monitoring systems, fleet management systems, the mine plan and SAP itself.

The calculation engine then automatically reforecasts future usage, availability, productivity, further maintenance costs and future resource requirements, according to RPMGlobal. It does this for every piece of equipment, every part and component for the entire life of each asset in real-time.

Harnessing the DLCC engine, AMT4SAP is able to identify asset lifecycle risks and opportunities to control and reduce maintenance spend, arming end-users with the ability to proactively make decisions.

AMT’s ability to define, track and maintain an asset’s lifecycle cost through the DLCC complements SAP’s work management capabilities across work scheduling, strategy definition, resource levelling, downtime capturing and warranty management.

“The differentiating strength of RPMGlobal’s AMT solution is the ability to rapidly generate and analyse multiple maintenance scenarios and strategies to determine the optimal solutions available to a mining operation,” the company said.

Through modelling multiple scenarios for evaluation of new assets (advanced modelling) and alternate maintenance strategies for assets already in operation (strategy optimisation); optimal long-term plans that impact on costs, availability and resources can be better understood and shared with stakeholders well in advance (long-term planning), it added.

A good example of the two systems complementary functions is AMT’s unique MCB (Maintenance Cost Budgeting) module, RPMGlobal said. Integrating AMT’s live lifecycle costing – which includes factoring in unplanned events not covered in SAP – together with SAP’s work order and master data, AMT4SAP is able to generate a full zero-based maintenance budget in “minutes instead of weeks”, it said.

AMT4SAP assists to ensure all data is structured and ready for analytics solutions, such as SAP Analytics Cloud. “This means users spend less time creating a budget and more time using the analytical tools to better understand the maintenance business and deliver real value,” the company said.

AMT, RPMGlobal says, is used by hundreds of mine sites worldwide as well as all major OEMs to manage their assets and contracts.

RPMGlobal takes mine optimisation to a new level

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RPMGlobal says it has delivered on its commitment to release an innovative design solution to the market before the end of the year, unveiling its Underground Metals Solution (UGMS) Optimiser edition for mine planning customers.

UGMS Optimiser marks the first edition of the company’s agile design software offering, which is fully integrated with the company’s enterprise solutions.

This agile design application uses parameters and automatic design tools to build an optimal mine design for users, according to the company. “The time saved by using automatic design tools facilitates the ability for many alternative designs to be generated for consideration by a mine design user,” RPM said, adding, the user similarly changes whatever parameters they want and then re-runs their model to generate the optimal mine design based on the new parameters.

RPMGlobal Chief Executive Officer, Richard Mathews, said the launch was in keeping with the company’s mission of delivering “innovative end-to-end enterprise solutions for miners”.

He added: “At RPM, we are looking at design differently. We have leveraged the most advanced technologies including the very latest parametric design capabilities that support rapid scenario generation, long-term planning and optimal mine design for our customers.

“This ensures miners continue to drive efficiency and productivity improvements in a visually orientated environment.”

The company’s design solutions will initially be offered to UGMS customers of RPM’s XPAC Solutions software, according to Mathews, but he said it would look to rollout additional design capabilities that extend across its enterprise architecture in the “near future”.

UGMS Optimiser incorporates discrete optimisation tools used in underground metals mine design all in one solution, RPM says.

“This integration enables users to rapidly understand the impact of changes to key economic drivers such as metallurgical grade, mining costs, revenue, foreign exchange, and the roll-on effects these have on accessing the mineral deposits to be mined.”

The design solution uses RPM’s Development Optimiser, “an industry first combination of Planar Underground Network Optimiser and Decline Optimisation Tool (DOT) solutions”, it says, to determine the most economical network of tunnels to access and extract ore on each level of the mine.

Development Optimiser combines both tools in a parametric manner allowing extensive analysis of the deposit based on realistic constraints. The solution also uses Mine Stope Optimiser (MSO) to produce the stope shapes and stope inventories from a block model that spatially represents the location of the mineralisation.

RPM explained: “Depending on the size and mineral variation in the orebody or orebodies, using a manual process of generating the mining shapes to maximise the recovered resource value can take months.

“MSO has taken this manual process of generating the mining shapes based on the deposit size, shape and maximising recovered resource value, and reduced it down to days.”

Other key features, such as direct integration with the scheduler and enterprise solution, automated development creation and high-level financial analysis of the optimised outcome, are differentiators in the market space, according to the company.

Mathews said: “We are the first company to combine and incorporate the three big underground optimisers (Stope Optimisation, Underground Network Optimiser and Decline Optimisation) into one enterprise enabled design product which is a game-changer for the industry.”

This will give companies the ability to quickly evaluate multiple mine design scenarios to achieve profitable outcomes, while saving time on the process, he added.

“However, it is just the beginning, as we continue expanding our design solutions to complete our end-to-end enterprise offering which spans scheduling, simulation, finance, maintenance, operations and design,” he concluded.

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

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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.”

RPMGlobal’s mining financial budgeting and forecasting tool receives an upgrade

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RPMGlobal has launched a “major upgrade release” to its mining financial modelling software XERAS Enterprise (XE®).

This release transforms the product with an updated user experience, improved database technology, performance and enhanced enterprise capabilities, the company said.

The release of XERAS Enterprise 3 also completes a multi-year program of work that encompasses a number of important back-end and front-end features, including a modern user interface and mobile application, the company said.

“The move to a server-orientated database provides significant benefits to the end-user by consolidating disparate data across the platform into one place,” RPMGlobal says. “Users can then quickly access their entire information database to make informed and educated financial decisions.”

XERAS Enterprise has 30 years of continuous product history behind it, according to the company, and remains a leading enterprise financial modelling tool for the mining industry.

RPM Chief Technology Officer, Paul Beesley, said: “The launch of XERAS Enterprise 3 was in line with the company’s strategy of releasing simplified, standardised and integrated solutions that seamlessly inter-operate with other vendors’ systems using our Enterprise Planning Framework.

“XERAS Enterprise 3 expands the breadth and depth of RPM’s financial modelling software, solidifying our position as the financial budgeting and forecasting software solution of choice for the mining sector. Our intention has always been to have a completely integrated enterprise suite of products and this latest update forms a critical part of that vision.”

XERAS Enterprise is able to turn an engineering-oriented mine plan into a complete financial plan with a precise schedule of labour, equipment, consumables and parts, according to the company. “Unlike other budgeting methods which use spreadsheets as their base, XERAS Enterprise provides trust in the numbers by standardising processes and removing manual data entry.”

Richard Mathews, RPM’s CEO, said: “XERAS Enterprise provides the governance and control miners require, while still allowing for the agility and scalability that other systems simply struggle to provide.”

XERAS Enterprise also has the capability to integrate directly with the customer’s Enterprise Resource Planning systems. RPMGlobal said: “While these business intelligence-based tools can complete some level of calculations, they typically do not have pre-existing calculation logic to budget at the detailed spatial level required in the mining industry.”

Mathews concluded: “In today’s mining environment, confidence in the systems and processes is so critical. You need to have standardisation and a shared modelling logic across the business and XERAS Enterprise provides exactly that.”

RPMGlobal counts up mining milestones while reflecting on its half century

Communications in mining, IoT, Mining industry recognition, Mining services, Mining software, , , , , ,

RPMGlobal says, over the last 50 years, its consulting division has clocked up over 16,000 mining studies, with its software segment registering more than 4,500 global users.

With the organisation celebrating 50 years of delivering consulting and advisory services to the global mining industry, it said it has grown into the largest publicly traded independent group of mining technical experts in the world. This is alongside being a “pre-eminent supplier of technical software to all sectors of the industry”.

Reflecting on the company’s 50th anniversary, RPMGlobal Chief Executive Officer and Managing Director, Richard Mathews, said the company had remained true to its founding principles – established with Pincock Allen & Holt five decades ago – of providing deep domain expertise combined with industry-leading technology to the global mining sector.

“What the company has achieved since the launch of its first mining solutions product, Talpac, more than 40 years ago is testament to our passionate employees and strong executive leadership who continue to drive the company forward,” he said.

“RPMGlobal is deeply embedded in the mining industry and we are very proud to be able to continue supporting our customer’s along their journey as the industry advances.”

More recently, the acceleration of new investments in both software development and in strategic software acquisitions have strengthened the company’s position as a leader across scheduling, maintenance, execution, simulation and financial budgeting and costing technology, it said.

This includes the recent addition of a cloud-hosted offering for its enterprise software solutions.

“We are investing in technology solutions that enable our customers to move data inside and outside their enterprises. Intelligent mining is the future of the industry, and RPMGlobal is creating new benchmarks for the software of the future,” Mathews said.

RPMGlobal’s Consultancy & Advisory division, meanwhile, is seeing increased demand for its independent assessment and financier due diligence services, the company said.

RPMGlobal to provide cloud-based offering for mining software solutions

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RPMGlobal has announced that several of its enterprise software solutions will now be available with a “cloud-hosted offering”.

RPM CEO and Managing Director, Richard Mathews, said moving its software solutions to the ‘cloud’ had always been a goal of the company. “However, we knew that to accomplish this we had to re-architect our suite of software products to enable us to offer this alternative method of delivery to our customers.

“Six years of development later and all the pieces are now in place for RPM to offer our solutions to customers through a hosted offering using a dedicated cloud delivery team as evidenced by our recent sale of a cloud-based solution to a North American customer.”

RPM’s products, which include software for mine design & reserving, mine enterprise planning, mine planning & scheduling, mining simulation, mining financial budgeting, mine operation, and mine, asset & equipment maintenance, have traditionally been deployed by its customers at their mine sites or corporate offices on desktops or servers.

“This approach meant there were some inherent restrictions with respect to accessing the software including the reliability, accessibility and speed of private network connections as well as hardware performance limiting the solutions true capabilities,” RPMGlobal said.

RPM’s cloud hosting solution enables users to access RPM software products, applications, solutions and their associated data from anywhere, anytime from inside a safe, secure and high-performance computing environment, according to the company.

Mathews said: “Whilst we can now offer our customers a cloud-based solution, we will also continue to offer our traditional delivery approaches. This is just another example of how our Intelligent Mining software suite of products gives miners, mining contractors and original equipment manufacturers around the world new, improved and high performing user experience options.

“Every company has different policies and visions for their computing environment, so a one-size-fits-all approach never works. There are certainly companies that want to make the transition to the cloud environment and RPM is ready to support them in this endeavour.”

Mathews concluded: “A successful cloud offering requires us to work closely with our customers and, to that end, we have established a separate team who are tasked with ensuring our customers make a smooth transition to the cloud.

“Our goal is to ensure these customers see quantifiable benefits from RPM’s previous investment made in ‘enterprising’ our products and the obvious flow-on benefits from operating in the ‘cloud’.

There is no doubt that providing software delivery via the Cloud enhances our customer’s businesses whilst improving our ability to service them through better availability, upgradeability and system up-time.”

Intelligent mine design solution on its way from RPMGlobal

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RPMGlobal Holdings says it plans on releasing before the end of the year an innovative enterprise Intelligent mine Design (ID) solution, which will be fully integrated within RPM’s Intelligent Mining (IM) suite of products.

RPM’s CEO and Managing Director, Richard Mathews, said: “A lot of the products currently available in the market are based upon 30-year-old principles and the same underlying code base which has been adapted, reformed, tailored and customised over the years. Our approach to this new intelligent design solution is to start with a clean slate and build a solution utilising the latest enterprise architecture and technologies.”

The current focus of development for RPM’s ID solution is not on replacing the various entrenched third-party mine design solutions in the market, RPMGlobal said. “Rather, RPM’s focus has been to build on the decades of mining experience from its consulting and advisory businesses in order to produce a truly agile solution to support rapid scenario generation and optimal mine design decision making.”

Mathews said: “It is our strong belief that it is time the mining industry is provided with an intelligent, parametric design solution built upon, and utilising the very latest software technology and enterprise architecture.

“RPM has, to this point, elected not to develop its own mine design software and instead focused on ‘open integration’ with other third-party design applications. This approach was built on the assumption that third-party vendors would allow the free flow of data between applications and across the enterprise. The catalyst for RPM building its own design solution has been driven by the realisation that other suppliers to the industry have inherent limitations around enterprise interoperability. Furthermore, as the engineering process ‘starts with design’, a comprehensive RPM suite of planning products needs to include ID solutions in order to round out RPM’s established suite of integrated solutions.”

According to Mathews, RPM has been a data consumer of all of the established third-party mine design product vendors for decades. “We have ‘seen it all’ and, as a result, have a good understanding of the key ‘pain points’ currently being faced by mining engineers when using these traditional mine design solutions. Our goal with this new product suite is to address these key issues in a user-friendly and technically advanced manner. We will, of course, continue to work closely with the established third-party mine design software vendors and promote open standards with the intent of offering mining companies a real choice in a plug-and-play enterprise environment.”

RPMGlobal already has the architecture with their existing Enterprise Planning Framework and plenty of the required functionality from the acquisition of the rights to use the Mine 2-4D solution, it said. “The company’s intention is to now work with the industry to build an enterprise application that is fully open, interoperable and will harness the latest technologies bringing everything together into a simplified, enterprise, commercial-off-the-shelf product,” the company said.

Mathews concluded: “A number of our major customers who have seen the approach we are taking during pre-release demonstrations held under confidential terms are very excited with the progress to date and want to be involved in the development programme. Our advisory business, who are end users of third-party tools every day, are also providing invaluable input and insight into the product make-up.”