- Is MINEMAN Systems a mining company?
No, our clients are mining companies. MINEMAN Systems is a services company that provides software solutions and best-practice management systems to the mining industry.
- What actually is MINEMAN?
MINEMAN is a database software package used by mining and smelting operations primarily for marketing and procurement of metal-bearing concentrates. MINEMAN Systems is the company that built MINEMAN and supplies MINEMAN to those operations.
The name comes from the words "mine" and "management". MINEMAN is a registered trademark in 28 countries.
MINEMAN is designed for day-to-day operations that are mission-critical and generate cash for the business. These activities involve the movements and sales of products from the mine to the ultimate market, such as hauling concentrates using trucks and trains and ships, storing that valuable material in stockpiles, and selling it to smelters around the world where the metals are upgraded and refined into useful products.
These activities are mirrored in the downstream smelter and refinery operations where MINEMAN is also used. Here the supply chain is a mirror image - inbound shipments of smelter raw materials, and sales of smelter and refinery products.
- Who actually uses MINEMAN?
People who use MINEMAN are professional staff and executives and their assistants whose jobs are in logistics, marketing, procurement, treasury operations, finance and accounting. They will run MINEMAN every day and rely on MINEMAN to help them manage mission-critical activities that generate money for their operation.
In mining and smelting there are only a few mission-critical activities, all the rest is essentially a support function. Those few activities are digging the ore, upgrading it in a mill, moving the products through a supply chain to a smelter, turning those mine products into useable metals, selling and buying and tracking revenue financials. These are the activities that generate the money and this is where MINEMAN is used.
- That sounds like a lot. What doesn't MINEMAN do?
MINEMAN is not used for the peripheral activities outside the core business of production and sales.
For example, MINEMAN doesn't manage warehousing and stores, or payroll or human resources, or maintenance of plant and equipment, or cost accounting or safety systems. There are many suppliers for these peripheral activities, and indeed those functions are vitally important to all operations. But they do not of themselves generate value and profit.
The income of a smelter or a mine is generated by production and sales. That is where MINEMAN is used.
Now, production and sales actually makes up only around 20% of the volume of the data that is gathered in a mine or smelter operation. But that 20% represents 80% of the complexity, and 100% of the income.
- Why haven't I heard of MINEMAN? I don't see it advertised in mining magazines?
MINEMAN is a quiet success story. Our company has been in business a long time and our new business has always been generated through word-of-mouth. Our clients recommend us to others in the industry, so we don't need to advertise. We don't rush and we take the time to get it right.
- Is MINEMAN expensive?
It depends on the size and type of your operation. The benefits are generally so large for a mine or smelter that MINEMAN pays for itself in a few months.
People find themselves able to detect hidden losses through shipping transactions or fraudulent assay manipulation. The paybacks are surprising.
The automation of business processes alone frees up about 2 days per week per person, and this freed-up time is invariably used for ongoing improvements and strategic development. That's a perfect outcome if you have a shortage of experienced people.
Our company, MINEMAN Systems, also supports MINEMAN for the life of the mining and smelting operation. That's a big commitment, and it take up more than half our time. If you work in the mining industry you'll know what we mean. It's all to do with consistent performance and creating value for your operation over the long term.
- What does MINEMAN compete with?
MINEMAN's main competitor is the humble Excel spreadsheet. Spreadsheets are wonderfully flexible but they are not databases.
Spreadsheets can also be difficult to maintain, are often opaque in their business assumptions, often relying on specific individuals. When the person who developed the spreadsheet leaves the company, you have a real problem.
Spreadsheets are also difficult to audit, so most mining houses these days are phasing them out due to lack of transparency and poor financial controls. Finally, spreadsheets themselves do not have standards and spreadsheet solutions reflect the inconsistent nature of individual preferences.
MINEMAN also competes with Mincom and SAP. These big and expensive systems do things that MINEMAN doesn't do, like plant maintenance, stores and supplies, and cost accounting, and that is what they are good at.
MINEMAN's strength is that it is purpose-built for the actual business of mining, where the money is made, not where the money is spent. Because of our single-minded focus, MINEMAN can be implemented quickly, which means that clients get a perfect fit and get the benefits fast.
- You describe MINEMAN as an "integrated" database system. What do you mean by "integrated"?
An integrated system means one set of numbers, one set of rules and assumptions, and no barriers between departments. In an integrated system the original data is entered only once. When a piece of data goes into the system, that's where it stays, there is no need to re-enter it again. And it's entered by the people who own it.
The data is combined with other original data and with business rules to provide useful outputs. An integrated system replaces the "islands of information" that have been built up in disconnected spreadsheets and small databases. You can still have your spreadsheets but now the original data is pumped into those spreadsheets from the database.
- We have a quote from a company which excludes reporting. How does that compare with MINEMAN?
MINEMAN contains business templates and knowledge on how things are done in the industry. It comes pre-installed with dozens of reports, all of them well thought out and formatted and ready to run. When it comes to concentrate realisation and financials, there are excellent reports in MINEMAN for just about every business process you can think of.
- Can I run MINEMAN on my computer?
If you can run Microsoft Office then you can run MINEMAN. You also need a central server for the database and a network or Internet link.
- I travel a lot. Can I run MINEMAN from another office or from a hotel?
You can run MINEMAN from anywhere in the world provided you have a reasonable internet connection.
- Our old system is crucial to running our operation. But it is heavily customised and contains a lot of rules and assumptions about our business. Can we replace this with MINEMAN?
It's likely that 90% of your needs will be met with the standard MINEMAN configuration; the rest can be customised for your site.
This is because MINEMAN has been designed with a very "deep" configuration layer. From a user's viewpoint that means that are lots of tick boxes and lots of tables that contain information about other information, and about rules and assumptions.
And most importantly MINEMAN contains a lot of rules and methods that have been built up over many years. It is the product of thousands of discussions with hundreds of users in the industry. MINEMAN has evolved into what is today regarded as a best-of-breed solution for mining and smelting operations.
- Our old system was built by consultants who are long gone. I don't know if we can even specify our needs properly. Can you help?
Most of the things that your old system does will have already been created in MINEMAN.
We will pull the old system apart and see what might remain to be done. Frankly, there are not really a lot of different ways to properly calculate a stockpile balance or run the month-end accounts. We understand these business processes in detail, so it's likely we will understand what your old system does very quickly.
It's also common to find that a lot of the things that you do manually outside of the old system have been thought out and standardised and already set up in MINEMAN.
- Our Marketing Department is struggling with some new types of marketing contracts. The spreadsheets are very complicated and we just can't see how an outside package can do the same thing.
MINEMAN has been designed to handle any type of marketing contract. Imagine a 3-part brick contract for selling copper, with different contract structures, multiple QPs, and multiple conditional structures for payable metals and penalties. The contract may also require buy-back clauses and adjustments. Then add local tax requirements, dual currencies and the need to buy and sell using the same contract. MINEMAN can do that and we guarantee that it can manage your contract.
And you don't need to spend a lot of time learning how to set up your contracts; we will set them up in MINEMAN and then maintain them for you as well. Or help you maintain them yourselves if that is what you want to do.
- Our information is highly confidential. How can we be certain that it does not find its way to another party?
Firstly, when we carry out a MINEMAN project we treat your information with the utmost confidence. We sign a comprehensive confidentially agreement with you. Our offices and internal systems are highly secure, both physically and electronically, and we treat security very seriously.
Secondly, during the installation project, we will work with you to establish roles and responsibilities, and audit requirements and internal controls. We then precisely map those requirements onto MINEMAN's comprehensive security layer. No one will see your valuable data unless you want them to.
- Our auditors say our current system will violate Sarbanes Oxley? Is MINEMAN SOx compliant?
MINEMAN was reengineered during the early years of Sarbanes Oxley in 2003 and 2004. At the time we worked with top accounting companies to arrive at a practical and robust solution for Section 404 of the Act.
It was pretty tough, but the outcome was worth the effort.
Today MINEMAN maintains a hidden audit trail of changes to data that can impact financial outcomes. Key business processes can be locked down and controlled, and customised from site to site. The mandatory SOx tests for monitoring compliance for Section 404 are available within the MINEMAN framework.
Auditors of mining companies that use MINEMAN have consistently signed off on MINEMAN and on the financial processes that it controls. And we are pleased to report that auditors have recommended other mining companies abandon their their spreadsheets and implement MINEMAN.
- Do we need to supply people for the project?
You will need one person to be the point of contact and act as a project manager. Others as may be required, on a part time basis, from IT and from each of the business areas impacted by the project, such as Logistics, Marketing or Procurement, Finance and Accounting. Their good ideas and experience will also contribute to the way MINEMAN is configured and will ensure the best possible solution for your operation.
- How quickly can I install MINEMAN?
A typical MINEMAN project includes configuring the system for your specific business rules and circumstances, setting up standards and procedures, loading in your historical data back to day one, testing in parallel with your old system, and training on site. Also setting up the MINEMAN server on your data centre or office network. The whole process, from project approval to go-live, can take less than three months depending on the complexity of the site and whether or not it is a new operation.
- We need a solution now and can't wait three months.
No problem. If you need it now you can have it now. It's called MINEMAN Global.
You can run MINEMAN from anywhere in the world as a service over the Web. Your copy of MINEMAN and your valuable data can be delivered out of our 24/7 data centre. When you run MINEMAN this way it will appear just as fast and look just as if it was run by your own IT department. Your data is completely secure, under guard and continually backed up. And your data together with the MINEMAN software and best-practice business logic is available to you around the clock.
So this is how we can get you up and running really fast.
Later on, if you want to migrate MINEMAN to your own data centre or to your office network we will work with your IT department to make that happen.
Our MINEMAN Global service is also a good way to go if your people are spread far and wide.
- We have a small mine that may not justify the cost of MINEMAN. But our small operation is just as complex as a big one. Is there a solution for us?
We know that your business is just as complex. And that your people have to work harder because there are less of you than in a big mine.
MINEMAN Systems has developed a "small mine package" that combines the basic essentials from the various MINEMAN modules, preconfigured for a small mining environment. All of your departments can run the same system and share the same data.
If you need a solution fast, or if your IT infrastructure is not quite ready, your can run the Small Mine Package from our data centre using MINEMAN Global. This solution is all a small mine really needs to have. And it has all the "grunt" and all the business logic of a big-mine solution.
- We are in a remote location and our IT infrastructure is out of date. Can you help?
No problem. You can run MINEMAN Global.
Modern technology ensures that you can run MINEMAN and get the benefits over a slow communications link. Our on-demand technology allows you to run a full featured MINEMAN application even over a telephone line. It's slower than on a fast internet connection or on a network, but it's perfectly workable and it will do the job for you. And it's bullet-proof and secure.
- How can I find out more about MINEMAN?
Just give us a call on +61 3 9699 7200 or send an email to enquiries@mineman.com