The Gemcom Platform sounds like a simple concept: to allow mining companies to work off the same data using different Gemcom software programs that in turn enable mining personnel to do their part in the whole mining operation.
“The biggest single focus as a company is what we can deliver to people in terms of the value they can get out of the data that they have today, so both Surpac and GEMS [Gemcom’s software programs] will ultimately be unified around a database that lets both products work with the one data,” Gemcom vice president of research and development Steve Carter said.
“Gemcom Platform is not a product per se; it’s a set of technologies that allows people to do different things depending on their work role.”
According to Gemcom Australia managing director Nic Pollock, mining companies have long worked on “silos of information” where different aspects of an operation use their own method or program to come to a set of data that may be the same as another department, but set out differently.
“Most of the big mining companies have a mismatch of mining programs onsite,” Pollock said.
He believes the resource boom has provided the impetus for mining companies to start looking at software programs that could consolidate that data, making it easier to work with and less time-consuming, therefore speeding up productivity.
To aid companies in their quest to streamline data and its programs, Pollock unashamedly wants Gemcom to be the Microsoft of the mining software world, packaging the company’s products into a one user-friendly system and based on practices that are already inbuilt by the use of computer interfaces on a regular basis.
“When I say we want to be Microsoft, we want to be the one that says, here you are, here’s everything you need in a box,” Pollock said.
“You can still configure it to your environment but everything you need is there and, guess what, it talks to each other.”
Both Carter and Pollock give a two-to-five year time frame for the Gemcom Platform to come to fruition, in the meantime the company is busy with the release of GEMS 6.1 and another two programs due out over the next few weeks.
The new version of the GEMS collaborative mining system consists of mine planning, production scheduling and data management software among other things, and Gemcom said it aims to increase a mining company’s productivity.
Altogether there are 25 new features and enhancements, with the standout characteristic of the software the automatic ability to turn lines into a complete underground tunnel design including safety bays and filleted intersections.
“Other new capabilities focus on usability, including easy-to-use tools for visualising and editing search ellipses when interpolating block models, and workspace setup and management,” Gemcom said.
According to Carter, GEMS 6.1 was produced following consultations with mining companies, which pointed out what was lacking in its predecessor and also looked at new trends in software development worldwide.
What follows is a rigorous process for the company’s software development team, who ultimately decide what new features and enhancements to add to the new version based on the feedback.
“It’s quite an involved process,” Carter said.
“To a large degree, [GEMS 6.1] was a consolidation release where we’re really focusing on filling the gaps that we’d identified in the software in the 6.0 release and focusing on a number of distinct areas of functionality that people were quite desperately looking for some improvements on.”
Additionally, some of the ideas for GEMS 6.1 have also come from Surpac Minex Group, before and after its $31 million merger with Gemcom last year.
“Even very early on after our merger, there has been some value out of cross-pollination of ideas, and sharing of software components that have come from Gemcom and Surpac Minex Group prior to the merger,” Carter said.
In an intensely competitive industry, Gemcom will be firing on all cylinders with the release of Surpac 6.0 in the next two weeks, which share quite a few similarities with GEMS 6.1.
However according to Carter, although GEMS and Surpac do the same thing and work off the same data set, both programs will not be consolidated into one program.
He said Gemcom would rather spend more time working on one component and make it work really well, and put that into both Surpac and GEMS.
“GEMS and Surpac will not merge to create a single product, but the two programs will progressively share a greater number of components between the two,” Carter said.
Meanwhile, a new version of Minex – which is also similar to GEMS and Surpac but aimed at the coal industry – is expected to hit the market over the next few weeks, and the Gemcom team is already starting to develop new versions of both GEMS and Surpac.
“We already have development plans that are starting to crystallise for a version 6.2 for GEMS and a Surpac version 6.1,” Carter said.
And in a time of the mining boom where customers are aplenty, Gemcom’s aim of becoming a Microsoft-like figure has become more attainable following its merger with Surpac Minex, which has boosted its market share to around 35-40%, according to both Carter and Pollock.
“[The merger] has alone been a trigger for renewed interest from some clients who previously may not have bothered to think of Gemcom or Surpac Minex Group as a company that they thought could deliver them the goods,” Carter said.
