Published in June 2006 Australian Longwall Magazine

 

"For example, if we look at understanding the impact of improved dragline efficiency on; total minesite human resources, maintenance activities, truck shovel stripping requirements, drill and blast requirements and sales.

 

"What impact does an improvement in one operational area have on other potential critical paths in the operations maze?”

 

This approach has served Runge well in its main consultancy areas of strategic mine planning and business forecasting, mine feasibility, due diligence and implementation of mine business forecasting systems.

 

Runge has seen an increase in its work over the past year in major mine expansion and feasibility studies – to cope with growth in commodity demand; and implementation of mine business forecasting systems to make the limited number of mining professionals more efficient at what they do and to assist in compliance with more stringent corporate governance standards with respect to full disclosure, audit ability, and transparency of business planning and reporting.

 

One of Runge’s major claims to fame is its XPAC software, which provides the ability to design and carry out detailed forecasting. XPAC will soon incorporate “Longwalls” – a new software package that is a stand-alone software system that assists an operation to optimise the face cycle process.

 

Runge also boasts an extensive courseware, which is suited to both mining people and associated service providers.

 

As well as providing software training courses, the consultancy also provides professional development courses covering topics including mine planning, mining economics, equipment optimisation, with specialist courses in dragline mining systems and truck and loader mining systems, mining for non miners, geology and integrated mine planning techniques.

 

Globally, its most popular course is on mining economics based on founder Ian Runge’s two books.

 

Look out on International Longwall News over the coming weeks for more individual profiles on survey participants.