The Exploration and Mining Business Reference Model (EM model), aimed at assisting companies in aligning their business and technical services, was embraced by the Global Mining Standards and Guidelines Group (GMSG) in January, following the model’s approval as an Open Group technical standard in April last year.

The Open Group technical standard approval acts as an official endorsement for an open and global industry standard that defines the business activities for organisations operating in the exploration and mining industries.

The EM model was developed by the Exploration, Mining, Metals and Minerals (EMMM) Forum, operating under the auspices of The Open Group, a vendor- and technology-neutral consortium, which is represented locally by enterprise architecture specialist company Real IRM.

The Open Group EMMM Forum director and senior consultant at Real IRM Sarina Viljoen says the forum and GMSG are investigating a joint project to formally adopt the EM model as the high-level definition of exploration and mining.

She explains that this was suggested during a meeting in January between The Open Group’s EMMM Forum and the GMSG, who have two sets of standards that are complementary to each other.

At a strategic level, the EMMM Forum is working on establishing standards focused on providing context for business processes, business capability and information in the industry, while the project undertaken in the GMSG is being undertaken at an operational level to define standards for specific focus areas.

“The EM model is the first approved standard for the mining and resources industry. It has also emerged at a time when the gap between output expectations and funding to make things happen is widening, and mining companies are seeking comprehensive solutions to make their operations productive and viable,” says Viljoen.

She adds that the new standard offers a unique opportunity to collaborate using a single model that is generic and widely applicable, yet also offers opportunity to explore specific activities on a more granular level.

Therefore, the EM model provides a reference of the standard exploration and mining activities in any metal or mineral mining environment, acting as a springboard for process definition activities and defining the basic set of business processes required to operate an exploration and/or mining business.

The EM model can be used to guide vendors in deciding which services and applications the organisation requires and it suggests which process must be supported.

The next deliverables from the EMMM Forum, expands the EM framework with a business capability map that describes the required capabilities and an information map that details the information that should exist at various points in time, explains Viljoen.