With uncertain commodity markets, mining software group Mintec has reported a “year unlike any other” in 2013, as resource firms increasingly turned to technological innovation to increase efficiencies and lower costs.
“Business as usual for a mine will not cut it in future,” Mintec president John Davies says, adding that software, better workflow practices and more training for existing staff are important elements of achieving efficiencies.
Tucson, Arizona-headquartered Mintec, which was founded in 1970, has developed the MineSight modelling and mine planning software platform, which offers integrated solutions for exploration, modelling, design, scheduling and operation.
Faced with labour shortages and staff turnover, mines are striving for repeatability in processes, which Davies says Mintec’s tools can provide. Its scheduling tools – MineSight Schedule Optimizer, MineSight Haulage and MineSight Atlas – are attracting particular attention. “This is due to the demand for a standardised scheduling approach from a single vendor that can span from long-term planning to short-term planning,” he reports.
Launched in 2013, and on display at this year’s Prospectors and Development Association of Canada (PDAC) convention and trade show, MineSight Atlas is an activity and resource-based scheduler set to reshape the world of short-term planning. “With a resource-based, true calendar approach to multiple-activity scheduling, MineSight Atlas quickly manages material movement and reclaim. It works with multiple block models and makes mine areas for openpit and underground mining easy to manage,” Davies explains.
Mintec reports that Atlas has already made an impression on its clients, citing Abel Puerta of Peruvian company Hochschild Mining, who describes the software as a “necessity”. “Integrating the different parts, or programmes, into just one to make it more robust, reduces training time and makes the product more complete because you have all of those tools at your fingertips.”
Other products in high demand are Mintec’s operational tools, such as MineSight Axis for grade control and drill and blast and its recently released MineSight Performance Manager for analytics.
Performance Manager, which is also on display at PDAC, is the newest addition to MineSight’s operational product suite and features consolidated reporting and true mining analytics. “It quickly answers the ‘what’ and the ‘why’ of mine production via dashboards that offer streamlined displays for intelligent decisions. With a window on operational costs and production goals, it saves time and money. It also eliminates spreadsheets,” Davies reports.
Besides MineSight Atlas and MineSight Performance Manager, other products on display at this year’s PDAC is MineSight Implicit Modeler, MineSight Reserve, MineSight Surface Resloping Tool and MineSight Model Manager. Also on display will be a range of new products designed to broaden the software’s appeal to underground mines. These are MineSight Stope, MineSight Decline Design, MineSight Sub-Blocking tool and MineSight Room and Pillar.
Stope makes life easier for planners seeking flexibility and control in the design and conceptual-level scheduling of underground stope mining, Davies says. It handles tasks such as block economic value computation, stope slicing, scheduling and reserve reporting.
The new decline design tool is said to save engineers “hours of work and frustration”. It helps design a near optimal path from a start point to an end point, with bearings that match the required constraints. It can also be controlled to automatically design within three-dimensional spatial constraints.
The new sub-blocking tool improves block model visualisation and accounting, while the room and pillar tool generates room and pillar designs in regular patterns by combining geotechnical considerations with geometric constraints to produce mine layouts.
Further, Mintec expects its vision for an integrated planning suite to be realised in 2014. Davies explains that it will connect two products – MineSight Atlas for short-term planning and MineSight Schedule Optimizer for medium-term and long-term planning – through a common database, with common master data.
New University Concept
Mintec, which has big names on its books, including BHP Billiton, Rio Tinto, Vale and GlencoreXstrata, has recently announced changes to its global training in response to a need for a more flexible training experience. On January 1, it launched the University of MineSight to help its clients get the most from its software.
Davies explains that the University of MineSight concept is designed to fit clients’ schedules and budgets. It has a mix-and-match approach, which supports different levels of expertise.