Geological Inventory in real time with SAP HANA

[Former Member]

International mining software company MineRP worked on a spin-off of a SAP HANA POC and come up with a unique invention patented as a system and method for mineral asset management, accounting and analysis.

Never heard of Geological Inventory?  Let me explain: Mines use Resource and Reserve statements to tell investors what their mineral assets are worth.  Problem is, to create such a R&R statement is such a complicated exercise, that they can only do this once per year, at huge cost and effort. MineRP proved through a real-world SAP HANA Proof of Concept that the combination of MineRP's spatial integration platform for mining technical solutions and the computing and analysis power of SAP HANA provides a vehicle with which mines could do in real-time, on-demand what currently costs them up to half a million dollars do once a year!

Find us in Hall 8 on Tuesday 5 November at 15:30 at SAP TechEd Amsterdam to see the Spectacular Results that were achieved.

Quick Overview

Mining companies are very often vast organizations, with information required from many, varied data sources for the purposes of modeling and planning, operational execution, continuous improvement and multi-faceted management reporting and governance requirements. This reality creates an immense demand to integrate information sets from across the organization, including mining technical data (created in technical domains such as geology, mine planning, survey  etc.), and commercial data created in supporting business domains such as finance and accounting, human resources, supply chain management etc.   While commercial ERP solutions have largely succeeded in the integration of the supporting business functions, such integration is much harder to achieve in the mining technical disciplines, where fragmented specialist systems are still the standard.

The non-integrated nature of the Mining Technical Systems and Services domain leaves significant areas (including Mineral Asset Valuation), open to interpretation by Technical and Commercial disciplines, generally represented by a Competent or Qualified Person within each mining organization.  A specific issue related to this reality is the fact that mining companies are unable to continuously track the status of Resources and Reserves. This is mainly due to the time consuming nature of manually integrating and interpreting the data that describes the state and status of the Mineral Asset.  Among other things, decisions regarding the application of capital to the Mineral Assets are impeded by the lack of integration between the Financial and Mining Technical domains, as is the tracking and reporting against capital projects at a granular level.

The MineRP GeoInventory Concept

MineRP GeoInventory Patent as Implemented on SAP HANA and SAP MM IM

As shown in the diagram above, MineRP has developed (patent pending) a system and method for mineral asset management, accounting and analysis through:

1. Amalgamating and integrating big volumes of  fragmented mining technical data sets into a spatially-referenced, standards-based mining technical database,
2. Leveraging the ability to process big volumes of data in an efficient manner, employing current and future big data platforms, including but not limited to so-called in-memory databases,  in order to
3. Continuously translating the effect of changes in the state and status of the real mineral asset, as described in the integrated, spatially-referenced mining database, into standard stock management transactions for processing in standard inventory management systems.
4. Allowing standard stock management and other financial principles to be brought to bear on mineral asset management in mining.

Early Industry Response

MineRP has started introducing the GeoInventory Invention to selected global clients, and also did a specific proof of concept of the underlying technologies using the SAP HANA in-memory database management system.  This resulted in SAP inviting MineRP to their recent SAP Industry Advisory Council for Mining Annual Meeting (IACM), in St Louis, Missouri.  Feedback from top mining companies at this event as well elsewhere is overwhelmingly positive.

The resulting Mineral Asset Inventory provides mining companies with a range of business-critical optimization opportunities, including:

• The ability to provide real-time, reliable resource and reserve reporting in compliance with regulatory codes, as and when required.
• The ability to provide financial and other business input into the production planning processes through analysis of the mineral asset inventory
• The ability to visually integrate operational and commercial reporting
• The ability to vastly improve the speed and accuracy of reserve and resource audits through reliable access to datasets and transaction records in both the mineral asset inventory and the integrated underlying mining technical datasets.
• Scenario-building and testing, especially as it pertains to the interaction of the commercial and mining technical domains
• The ability to do real-time analytics on any aspect of the mineral asset, whether technical, financial or combined.

For more information about MineRP’s revolutionary GeoInventory solution, please contact Empie Strydom at estrydom@minerpsolutions.com