Engineering and Mining Journal - Whether the market is copper, gold, nickel, iron ore, lead/zinc, PGM, diamonds or other commodities, E&MJ takes the lead in projecting trends, following development and reporting on the most efficient operating pr
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O P E R AT I N G S T R AT E G I E S Mine Engineers Get New Underground Design and Planning Tools A major data and communications upgrade had a strong impact on performance at Dundee Precious Metals' Chelopech underground mine, enabling the company to increase production by 53%. At the same time, it reduced production costs 30% per metric ton and cut its IT costs by $1.5 million annually. (Photo courtesy of Dundee Precious Metals) Dassault Systèmes, parent company of mining software solutions provider Geovia (formerly Gemcom), recently issued a congratulatory press release recognizing its customer, Dundee Precious Metals, for receiving the 2013 Ingenious Award presented by the Information Technology Association of Canada (ITAC). The awards program highlights enterprises that demonstrate measurable evidence of productivity improvement, efficiency gains, revenue growth, overall business transformation or other organizational outcomes through the use of technology. Dundee Precious is a Toronto, Canada-based mining company that garnered ITAC's attention by aggressively increasing production, while at the same time reducing costs, at its Chelopech mining operation in Bulgaria. Geovia CEO Rick Moignard said, "Dundee's 'Taking the Lid Off' initiative at Chelopech put it at the forefront in leading change in the mining industry to utilize technology to drive efficiency and productivity gains. The mine has been able to go from producing 1 million to 2 million tons a year purely as a result of operational improvements, 64 E&MJ; • JANUARY 2014 without the addition of any new mobile mining equipment." As explained in ITAC's description of the award winners' accomplishments, the Chelopech underground mine was mired in the past, technologically: modern communications systems played a small role in its processes. Mine workers were still submitting paper reports at the end of each shift, while the next shift wandered around trying to locate equipment and vehicles needed to carry on mining. Mark Gelsomini, Dundee's corporate director of IT, was given the responsibility of bringing the Chelopech mine into the 21st century. The first step was to replace the mine's industry-standard RF voice network with a new Wi-Fi network from Cisco. Geovia's InSite mine production management and GEMS geology and mine planning software applications formed key components of the new technological backbone at the Chelopech mine. By integrating with other vendors' systems, mining equipment, and the Wi-Fi network, the mine is now able to visualize its operations in real time. Paper reports have been replaced with a 3-D tracking system, originally designed for the health care industry, to acquire real-time visibility into the entire underground operation, including the movement of ore along the conveyor belt and the current location of individual miners. The system can monitor the status of each piece of equipment and schedule preventive maintenance before an outage occurs. The results of the modernization had a major impact on Dundee's bottom line, enabling the company to increase production at the Chelopech mine by 53%. At the same time, the company reduced production costs 30% per metric ton, while simultaneously lowering IT costs by $1.5 million annually. While Geovia is justifiably pleased about the role its product management software played in the success of the mine upgrade, it hasn't lost focus on the fact that any mine's success rests firmly on the quality of its design and planning efforts. In support of those vital operational components, the company recently released updates to GEMS and Surpac that bolster their mine design and planning capabilities considerably. Surpac 6.6, according to Geovia, introduces the first mining software solution with features specifically suited for the design of stope shapes. Including the interactive Stope Designer and Stope Slicer tools, the new Stope Design Tools module provides underground engineers and designers with a new way to design stopes efficiently. Geovia claims the new Stope Design Tools module offers a simple and fast stope design process to improve operational results and productivity by maximizing ore recovery while minimizing costs. As part of the module, the new interactive Stope Designer tool steps through planes to delineate practical stope boundaries— ultimately creating a designed solid, which the Stope Slicer tool divides into practical mining shapes using planes and elevations to produce stope, pillar and crown pillar solids quickly. Eliminating the need for highly complex and inefficient macro-based soluwww.e-mj.com