Portugal’s mining strategy may favour copper over lithium
Portugal already has the largest copper mine in the European Union, operated by Lundin Mining.
BELO HORIZONTE, BRAZIL, (September 23, 2013): RungePincockMinarco (RPM) has today launched Open Pit Metals XPAC Solution (OPMS), an evolution in mine planning software focused on scheduling open pit metal mines.
Following on from the release earlier this year of mine planning solutions for open cut and underground coal, OPMS is a Commercial-Off-The-Shelf (COTS) product based on configuration not customisation. Commenting on the release, Alun Philips, Product Manager – Mine Planning said “OPMS delivers a streamlined process driven user interface that guides users through the scheduling process, from end to end. This approach of standardisation and simplification has been built on top of the underlying power of the industry leading XPAC scheduling engine. Users can now master the application quickly while at the same time having the scheduling confidence that comes with using XPAC.”
“In the past, scheduling solutions have relied on inputs from a number of different data sources, meaning more time preparing the underlying data than reviewing the outputs.” Philips stated. “With OPMS, this paradigm changes forever. The entire process is managed by the one solution from start to finish. Data is entered into its relevant entry point once and only once, including automatically updating adjustment changes to the underlying geological model. All through the one, end to end standardised process.”
RPM’s CEO and Managing Director, Richard Mathews said “This is all about speed of execution. With OPMS, a full schedule can be scoped and implemented in days rather than weeks meaning users can be generating, evaluating and delivering results up to 75% faster than they have been able to previously. In terms of maintaining the schedule we are now talking hours rather than days”.
OPMS includes RPM’s new Material Flow Interface. A simple, easy to use graphical representation of the material flow modelled through a mine, from the pit through processing to the final product. Mr Philips commented that “This isn’t just a screen representation, the interface automatically creates the underlying dependencies, constraints, targets and underlying mining rules that are used right across the solution. This is then coupled with our upgraded and extended Advanced Scheduling Optimization capabilities that significantly improve the mine planning process”.
Mr Philips concluding by saying that “Communication of the schedule has also been upgraded with advanced reporting capabilities and configurable graphical dashboards standard in the solution thereby allowing engineers to quickly analyse and communicate the scheduling results, straight from the source.”
“RPM have been delivering mine solutions for over 45 years, and it’s this experience that has been built into our solution intelligence. With OPMS, we have taken yet another step forward.”
OPMS is RPM’s third commodity specific solution, following on from Underground Coal Solution and Open Cut Coal both of which launched earlier this year. RPM will be launching OPMS at Exposibram, Brazil with product demonstrations available at our booth.
