Tag Archives: SaaS

Orcoda’s OWLS software platform to be used at Kestrel’s coal operation

Coal technology, IoT, Mining services, Mining software, Steel and iron ore, , , , , , , , ,

Orcoda Limited says its wholly-owned subsidiary Orcoda Resource Logistics has signed a software as a service (SaaS) contract with Kestrel Coal Pty Ltd.

Kestrel is one of the world’s largest producing underground metallurgical coal mines that produces around 7 Mt/y of metallurgical coal from its mine in the Bowen Basin of Queensland, Australia.

The Orcoda Workforce Logistics System (OWLS) provides a tailored solution to manage and oversee the workforce accommodation of Kestrel Coal’s 700-strong employees and contractors on site to enhance automation, efficiency and compliance, according to Orcoda.

The SaaS contract is for an initial term of three years and the expected revenue is made up of an initial implementation fee plus a monthly licence fee with a contract value of A$255,000 ($177,384), which could increase if Kestrel Coal later adopts additional features from the OWLS platform.

Geoff Jamieson, Orcoda Managing Director, said: “We are delighted to offer a solution to Kestrel Coal for managing and optimising their workforce accommodation on site. Our OWLS platform was specifically developed to manage mobile workforces in people-intensive industries that involve significant remote workforce management procedures, which are manually intensive at present. This means there is often limited visibility in the onboarding-to-roster cycle and between different teams within an organisation. Orcoda believes our software and contracting expertise will deliver significant benefits to Kestrel Coal and other similar companies in the natural resources/infrastructure industries.”

Newmont to continue use of K2fly’s RCubed Resource Governance Solution

Environmental, Mineral exploration, Mining services, Mining software, Precious metals, , , ,

K2fly Ltd has announced that Newmont has signed a five-year extension to its existing contract for K2fly’s Resource Governance Software as a Service (SaaS) solution.

The extension agreement has a total contract value (TCV) of A$1.3 million ($951,289) and builds on the initial three-year agreement signed in March 2020, which came with a TCV of A$900,000. The agreement will extend the contract period to March 2028.

Newmont will continue to use K2fly’s RCubed Resource Governance Solution across 12 operating mines as well as joint ventures and projects across global operations as part of the agreement, K2fly says.

RCubed software, K2fly says, generates resource and reserve reports that support reporting codes such as JORC, NI-43-101 and SAMREC across the major stock exchanges – including NYSE, LSE, TSX, ASX and JSE. It assists mining and resource companies in complying with their regulatory reporting obligations.

Nic Pollock, Chief Executive Officer of K2fly, said: “This extension of our original agreement from March 2020 with the world’s leading gold company reaffirms the importance of K2fly’s solutions in helping large resources organisations with their ESG reporting and aligns with Newmont’s purpose to create value and improve lives through sustainable and responsible mining.”

Seequent extends cloud capabilities and solutions for mining with Minalytix deal

Mineral exploration, Mining equipment, Mining mergers and acquisitions, Mining services, Mining software, , , , , , , ,

Bentley Systems’ Seequent business unit has acquired Canadian software company Minalytix, the developer of MX Deposit.

The acquisition, which comes only a month after Seequent’s purchase of Imago Inc, a developer of cloud-based software for the capture and management of geoscientific imagery, extends Seequent’s cloud capabilities and solutions for mining, including greenfield exploration, resource development and mining production, Bentley says. Prior to the transaction, Seequent held a minority shareholding in Minalytix, and its partnership included exclusive global rights to sell MX Deposit.

MX Deposit simplifies and controls how drill hole and other field data is collected, managed, and shared throughout the lifecycle of a deposit, according to the company. Mining exploration teams can configure the solution for various activities, including diamond and percussive drilling, grade control, underground face sampling, metallurgical sampling, stockpile sampling and sampling mill circuits.

“MX Deposit closes gaps in a project’s data collection, streamlines workflow, reduces errors and provides an audit trail to improve data confidence and act as a single source of truth for project data,” Bentley says. “MX Deposit is easy to use and configure and works anywhere online and offline, delivering valuable insights across all mining projects. Real-time collaboration is enabled with live project data.”

Mining companies use MX Deposit, in conjunction with other geophysics and geology data management and modelling tools, to find, develop and manage world-class deposits, and to enable teams to manage risk and make better, more profitable decisions, according to Bentley. Data can, it says, be easily integrated into MX Deposit in order to provide context that delivers more knowledge and better decision making.

Seequent already integrates its Leapfrog, Oasis montaj, Target and Imago solutions with MX Deposit, streamlining processes and increasing efficiency for geologists, engineers and other stakeholders.

“MX Deposit unlocks value from drilling, one of the largest investments for any mining and exploration company, with enduring high-quality data,” it says.

MX Deposit is a Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) solution that auto-scales to meet users’ needs, from small to multi-national companies, according to Bentley. Users can create a customised data management solution within hours to collect and control drill hole and other field data and immediately gain insights across all projects, the company says.

There are no limits on data users can store, with some logging millions of samples and blast holes and tens of thousands of drill holes.

Graham Grant, CEO of Seequent, said: “We’re excited to welcome the Minalytix team to Seequent, following our successful collaboration, to broaden the mining workflow through further cloud capabilities. Drill and sample data are the lifeblood for mining companies when exploring, and MX Deposit naturally aligns with our mining and exploration portfolio, including newly acquired geoscientific imagery platform Imago. We have already done a great job of integrating the software and now we are excited to integrate the team.”

Minalytix Co-founder and CEO David Peres, said: “We’re delighted to join Seequent as it allows us to deliver on our founding mission to impact the mining industry positively. We partnered exclusively with Seequent a couple of years ago as they had earned a reputation as a trusted mining innovator with a global reach. As a result, demand for MX Deposit increased in leaps and bounds. With Seequent’s expertise and support, MX Deposit will be able to reach its full potential.”

RPMGlobal adds predictive element to mine maintenance solutions with IMAFS buy

Communications in mining, IoT, Mining mergers and acquisitions, Mining software, , , , , , , , , , , , ,

RPMGlobal has entered into a share purchase agreement to acquire Canada-headquartered, inventory optimisation management software company, IMAFS.

As a Software-as-a-Service and cloud-delivered provider of inventory optimisation software, IMAFS has more than 20 years experience developing and selling its flagship IMAFS product, RPMGlobal says.

The IMAFS solution is an inventory management and forecasting software solution that connects to an organisation’s Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) system and uses proprietary artificial intelligence (AI) algorithms to greatly improve inventory management, according to the company. The product has been designed and built for the sole purpose of optimising the inventory holdings of large asset-intensive companies.

RPM CEO and Managing Director, Richard Mathews (left, pictured with David Batkin, Executive General Manager – Technology Consulting), said: “We are very pleased to have concluded negotiations to acquire IMAFS and are really looking forward to welcoming the Quebec-based IMAFS team into the wider RPM family. The product is a great fit with the existing RPM product suite and further builds on our cloud and optimisation offerings.”

RPM explained: “In the mining industry, management and optimisation, specifically the maintenance, repair and operational (MRO) inventory is critical to ensuring operational continuity and attainment of production targets.

“The key to accurately forecasting any type of inventory is understanding future demand. Mining MRO inventory optimisation is often a unique challenge to solve due to low volume and/or erratic turnover with long lead times, high component costs and the complex logistics associated with operating in remote locations leading to companies over-stocking parts inventory and tying up capital unnecessarily.”

When it comes to mining, properly managing MRO inventory is vital, RPM says. If the plant, or key pieces of equipment (loaders, trucks, conveyors, etc) stop operating because spare parts are not available, a costly operational problem develops. A poor inventory optimisation process can result in a company ordering inventory urgently due to reactive inventory processes rather than predictive inventory processes.

IMAFS has developed a hosted subscription service that, RPM says, allows inventory data to be extracted from a company’s ERP product or Computer Maintenance Management system and analysed programmatically.

IMAFS’ proprietary and cutting-edge algorithms also include AI logic incorporating parameters such as transport mode, carrier, weather, customs, seasonality, holidays, availability, and many other data points. IMAFS will also identify excess or obsolete stock that can be returned or disposed of, according to RPM.

Mathews added: “Four years ago, we acquired iSolutions because we understood the importance of planning maintenance in parallel with production. AMT stands alone when it comes to forecasting the lifecycle cost of an asset using its dynamic lifecycle costing engine. This real-time engine accurately predicts when customers will require major parts and components.

“In other words, by going back to first principles (as AMT does), we can predict the future demand that can be factored into IMAFS’ advanced AI algorithms. That future demand is the critical piece of the puzzle so that IMAFS can optimise procurement and management of critical parts and components.”

Mathews says the AMT solution is used by the major OEM’s and their dealer network. These organisations can take forecasts from their customers into the IMAFS product, thereby assisting them in optimising their spare parts inventory.

“While we haven’t had a product to do this in the past, we have been involved in a number of discussions with dealers and miners to do exactly this,” he said.

Robert Lamarre, IMAFS Founder, said: “It is immensely pleasing to see the passion emanating from the team at RPM to championing inventory optimisation and cloud-driven enterprise integration. We are convinced that the IMAFS product suite will benefit from increased investment and the sales and marketing support that RPM can offer these products right around the world.”

Following completion, Lamarre will continue his involvement with promoting IMAFS through a third-party business partner authorised to market and distribute IMAFS products to customers in North America outside of mining and resources.

The acquisition is expected to close on November 25, 2020 subject to several conditions precedent and customary completion events.

RPMGlobal brings Software as a Service to the haulage sector

IoT, Mining services, Mining software, , , , , , , ,

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.”

K2fly’s RCubed hits new heights with Newcrest Mining SaaS agreement

Communications in mining, IoT, Mining software, Precious metals, , , , , ,

K2fly says it has signed an agreement with Newcrest Mining to implement its RCubed resource governance software as a service (SaaS) solution.

The agreement covers the rollout of the RCubed software solution across the reporting lines of Newcrest for its resources and reserves in its global gold operations across seven sites in Australia, Indonesia and Papua New Guinea.

The deal follows closely on the heels of K2fly signing a similar SaaS pact with Glencore Canada. It is also less than six months since K2fly acquired the RCubed software through the acquisition of Prodmark Pty Ltd.

RCubed software generates resource and reserve reports that support reporting codes such as JORC, NI-43-101 and SAMREC across the major stock exchanges – including NYSE, LSE, TSX, ASX and JSE. It assists mining and resource companies in complying with their regulatory reporting obligations.

This is a three-year SaaS based software contract and, with implementation costs, is worth more than A$150,000 ($100,145) in the first year, according to K2fly. Implementation is to commence immediately, and there will be recurring revenues on an annual basis. The initial total contract value is over A$330,000, K2fly said.

As with all RCubed implementations, each operation and all relevant data is captured at a base level and involves comprehensive governance data capture and reporting, the company said.

Nic Pollock, K2fly Chief Commercial Officer, said: “Newcrest is the largest gold producer listed on the ASX and a top 10 global producer and adds to the growing momentum we are seeing within the mining industry and its acceptance of RCubed as a resource governance reporting solution.”