Outsourced plant operations and maintenance specialist Minopex, a member of global multidisciplinary organi- sation DRA Group, has com- pleted the implementation of new procurement and maintenance systems for four of the 15 sites at which it is currently involved in South Africa, Botswana, Lesotho and Mozambique.
Authorisation for these projects was awarded in 2013.
Minopex business development director Rafael Abela tells Mining Weekly that the company chose UK-based software company Sage’s X3 software for the procurement and stores holding system, as well as the company’s Pragma Version 5 for the maintenance system.
“The systems are fit-for-purpose and the project scoping and design was completed at the end of August last year,” says Abela, adding that the first two sites were brought online at the end of September 2013.
Minopex decided to implement new systems to consolidate its bulk buying power in the marketplace, thereby passing these savings on to clients, he explains.
Abela points out that this also ensures that Minopex’s intellec- tual property is protected and that its clients have live data to work from regarding the stock and stores holding.
“The maintenance system enables Minopex to have real-time information on the state of its operations and maintenance strategies,” he notes.
Minopex operations director Radesh Sukhdeo says the historical systems used by Minopex for materials management and supply chain management lacked functionality and limited the company in terms of effectively managing, assessing and reporting on operational efficiencies.
With this in mind, and with the aim of improving and increasing service delivery to clients, Minopex partnered with consultancy Cerrex Consulting to standardise and improve its materials management and supply chain management processes.
The solution presented by Cerrex Consulting included using Sage X3 and Pragma Version 5.
Sukhdeo explains that, as many mining sites in South Africa and Africa are remotely situated in geographically challenging areas where network connectivity is a challenge, one of Minopex’s pre- requisites for Cerrex Consulting was that the solution needed to operate in a decentralised environment.
This means that relevant master data belonging to all Minopex clients must be centrally maintained at the company’s head office, in South Africa, and replicated for use at the clients’ various mine sites, he says.
In turn, all transactional data from the remote sites are replicated and sent to head office. This has been successfully achieved at Aquarius Platinum’s Kroondal operations and at Boteti Mining’s Karowe mine, in Botswana, using US-based multinational corporation Microsoft’s SQL Replication. This also ensures that the relevant data and processes, and the ability to view and report on consolidated information, is standardised.
“The ability to manage all inventory catalogue-related information, including procurement contracts, while having control over and visibility of the procurement processes at the various sites, is one of the quantifiable success factors realised by Minopex,” says Cerrex Consulting CEO Dharini Raidoo.