PAM - Production Accounting for mines

Dynamics Ax Production Accounting

The Dynamics Ax Production Accounting module (PAM) covers the following areas:

Mining (shafts and open pits) operations
Stockpile management
Plant (metals accounting) operations
Revenue management
LIMS (laboratory information management system)

Production accounting is an essential component of any mining and metallurgical operation. Using Microsoft's Dynamics Ax business solution, we extended the traditional "ERP" boundary to include mine management. Whether it relates to haulage bookings, adjustments and surveys, or tramming and hoisting of ore from under the ground, Ax PAM provides the visibility and formalisation needed for planning, blasting, breakage, conveyance of ore, stockpile management, ore liberation, metals accounting, concentrate or commodity shipping, and much needed reports on recovery and related reconciliation.

In its most simplistic form, production accounting starts with mine planning, ore handling, surveying, and stockpile management. It tracks the value of the mineral content (assay multiplied by mass) throughout the normally complex production process (also known as the flowsheet).

Minerals are inorganic substances possessing reasonably defined, but not constant, chemical compositions and atomic structures. Many minerals have the same chemical composition, but very different physical properties due to a difference in crystal structure. For example, graphite and diamonds have exactly the same chemical composition (carbon atoms), but their properties differ. Extracting these minerals is complex: for example, the six different platinum group metals (PGMs) embedded in ore require different processes. These processes do not happen in parallel, and some PGMs go around in circles before they emerge, thus taking longer than others to be extracted.

The above issues are compounded by high prices for these minerals, lack of corporate transparency, and increased pressure from stakeholders for these mining houses to adhere to Sarbanes Oxley and the AMIRA P754 best practices.

The production accounting discipline provides a batch by batch view of the plant and its team’s minerals processing performance. Each of the team members are gatekeepers of vital elements of the recovery process. Production accounting, and the information it provides informs decision makers to manage the plant more effectively.

Some production accounting solutions in the market take pride in their functions and features, but these often exist at the expense of information integration.

Most, if not all, have separate and stand-alone modules for inventory (including WIP) valuations (ERP), mass balance calculations, sampling (LIMS), plant maintenance (SAM/EAM/CMMS), amongst others. Although the objective of these vendors is to integrate these modules, in reality they often don't.

Dynamics Ax with the Axnosis MMP does not separate the ERP, SAM (EAM or CMMS), PAM and LIMS modules – the same inventory master file is used for all these functions. Also, the same user interface exists across the disciplines. Add the Microsoft technology with its trusted, scalable and robust platforms and the result is an effective and low cost solution.