Production Accounting

Production Accounting (also referred to as Metals Accounting) is an essential component of any metallurgical operation. In essence Production Accounting 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 have different properties. To extract these minerals is complex. For example the six different PGM’s embedded in the ore requires different processes.  These processes do not happen in parallel. Some PGM’s go around in circles before they emerge, taking longer than others.

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 with Sarbanes Oxley and the AMIRA P754 best practices.

The Production Accounting discipline provides a batch by batch view of the minerals processing performance of the plant and its team. Each of the team members are gatekeepers of vital elements of the recovery process. Plant management is the decision makers aided by the information provided by the Production Accounting role.

Some of the Production accounting solutions in the market takes pride in their functions and features at the expense of integrated information.

Most, if not all of these, have separate and stand alone modules for inventory (including WIP) valuations (ERP), mass balance calculations, sampling, plant maintenance (SAM) and more. The objective of these vendors is to have these modules integrated but in reality they are not.

Dynamics Ax with the Axnosis MMP supports the best of breed features and above all does not separate the ERP, SAM and production accounting. The same inventory master file is used for all these functions. The same user interface exists across the disciplines. Add to this the Microsoft technology with trusted, scalable and robust platforms and you have a compelling and very cost effective solution.