RPM Announces Commodity-Specific Scheduling Solution for Open Cut Coal

BRISBANE, Australia (July 23, 2013) – RungePincockMinarco (RPM) has today launched Open Cut Coal XPAC Solution, a mine planning software product focused entirely on the intricacies of scheduling an open cut coal mine.

Introducing the new software, Alun Philips, RPM’s Product Manager – Mine Planning said, “Open Cut Coal belongs to our family of commodity specific solutions, based on the powerful scheduling engine of our flagship XPAC product. This family of products introduces a simplified, user-friendly approach to mine planning reducing the complexity of generating production schedules.”

Developed in conjunction with one of the world’s largest mining companies, Open Cut Coal gives miners a standardised approach to scheduling across their operations whilst simplifying the process to generate robust and reliable schedules. Early adopters have already seen a large reduction in implementation and user training time due to this approach.

Mr. Philips said, “The first thing users notice is just how incredibly easy it is to use. Users have a very small learning curve as the interface guides you through the scheduling process, with in-depth assistance embedded into the application.”

“One the biggest hurdles with other applications in the past has been the need to develop and maintain complex scripts to generate a workable schedule. In our XPAC Solutions, we removed the need for engineers to become script writers and debuggers, allowing them to spend significantly more time planning their mine than managing their data.

“Users shouldn’t see the simplified interface as a reduction of the overall power in the RPM scheduling offering.  At the core of Open Cut Coal is the powerful XPAC scheduling engine featuring RPM’s 40 years of mining intelligence, in-built.

“It’s this mining intelligence that enables users to generate accurate and robust schedules. Mining operations can now easily forecast production with a modern, auditable and reliable software solution.

“It’s fast to learn and can be implemented quickly so operations can quickly get up and running without the time and expense associated with intensive software training or model building.”

Open Cut Coal is RPM’s second commodity specific solution, following on from Underground Coal XPAC Solution which launched earlier this year.