RPMGlobal has released the latest version of its scheduling software, XPAC Solutions, with some of the notable features including disturbance reporting and scheduling, landform surface definition, support for battery trucks, multiple independent calendars, bi-directional Integration with RPM’s Schedule Optimisation Tool (SOT) and many more commodity-specific enhancements.
The latest version is focused explicitly on significant features requested by and developed with XPAC Solutions users globally, the company said.
According to Richard Mathews, RPM’s Chief Executive Officer, this release of XPAC Solutions is the most significant in the past several years.
“We committed a lot of resources to this release,” he said. “Coming off the major investment we made in performance and usability in the previous release, we had a very solid platform to introduce these new industry-leading features, without comprising speed, quality or accuracy.”
One of the most significant additions to the software suite is the environmental features allowing for disturbance reporting and scheduling with enhanced spatial zoning. This is ideal for reporting areas that are disturbed by mining and dumping within key areas, such as water catchment and habitat of specific animal species and constraining those areas within the schedule, according to the company.
Along the same vein of environmental enhancements is the addition of battery-electric truck modelling. This latest release provides full support for battery trucks including the ability to define which road segments can be used to recharge batteries. Therefore, users can evaluate whether adequate recharge provision has been made throughout the schedule by providing net energy usage information.
The addition of multiple independent calendars will also appeal to many users of the solutions, the company claims. Schedule and Product Optimiser (PO) can now use different calendars, including those with variable period durations. This provides enormous flexibility and further strengthens what is already the leading optimisation offering in the market.
Bi-directional integration with SOT is also one of the major new features of this latest release. This integration uses an API eliminating the need for file transfers between the products. Users can pass reserves and dependencies directly from XPAC to SOT so they can explore different strategies to maximise the net present value or several other parameters of the schedule. Once a schedule is optimised the results are integrated back into XPAC Solutions to be visualised, analysed and published.
Another new feature allows users of the open-cut coal solutions to import final landform surfaces allowing control of dragline and shovel dumps. Schedules will reflect landform restrictions once the permitted dump height in a particular area has been reached. The resultant schedules are now optimised from a trucking hours and final landform perspective.
Other additions in specific solutions are the support for alternative mining methods within the underground metals solution, simultaneous mining and backfill of pits within the open-pit metals solution, conveyor and strip design import improvements for coal operations as well as improvements to vertical progression for oil sands.
