IMAFS acquisition grows RPMGlobal’s optimisation suite and adds Artificial Intelligence applications to industry leading data intelligence platform

RPMGlobal has expanded its optimisation and Artificial Intelligence (AI) suite of innovative technology solutions following completion of the acquisition of Canada-headquartered inventory optimisation management software company, IMAFS.

With the finalisation of the acquisition today, the company has added a cloud delivered, inventory management and forecasting software solution to its suite of innovative technology solutions that utilises proprietary AI algorithms to greatly improve inventory management.

IMAFS analyses inventory data from the corporate Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) systems in order to deduce the optimal timeframe for inventory orders, costs and order frequency. IMAFS not only supports several forecasting methods, but also takes advantage of AI and machine learning capabilities to optimise the calculation of the key variables in inventory management.

The ‘forward looking’ predictive algorithms become particularly powerful when used in conjunction with RPMGlobal’s asset management system, AMT. AMT uses a Dynamic Life Cycle Costing engine that forecasts, in real-time, every maintenance event for a piece of equipment, at a component level, until the end of its economic life.

The future demand of an organisation’s assets, combined with the optimisation algorithms within IMAFS, are the critical pieces of the puzzle to optimise procurement and management of critical parts and components.

The delivery of an integrated AMT and IMAFS offering delivers an industry-first, predictive solution with more certainty of the future and less reliance on historical data.

ERP systems typically use historical consumption to predict future requirements which has its limitations in a highly volatile maintenance and repair focused industry, such as mining. This future demand knowledge will further improve the accuracy of parts availability, reducing inventories, decreasing stockouts and reducing equipment downtimes.

IMAFS is a proven industry solution with one operation reducing 78% of stockouts for items with high usage, while concurrently reducing stock levels by 14% for the items controlled by IMAFS. Another operation was able to reduce global inventory by 15% within the first 10 months without any diminution of service levels.

RPMGlobal Chief Executive Officer Richard Mathews said: “The company is leading the way in the practical application of innovative technology that increased miners’ operational competitiveness.”

“With our growing suite of optimisation products, RPMGlobal has built a capacity to help global operations extract more value where it counts,” he said.

“We are excited to be utilising AI technologies to improve the efficiency of mining operations across the asset management function.

“We intend to build on this AI capability by including additional variables in the models that may impact availability for our customers operating in remote locations. This experience will also assist us as we look to use these same advanced techniques to further optimise mine planning and scheduling.”

The acquisition of IMAFS further strengthens RPMGlobal’s Asset Management optimisation suite, adding to AMT’s maintenance strategy optimisation used by hundreds of customers globally. The introduction of another optimisation engine into the portfolio builds on RPMGlobal’s established optimisation tools that are already being used in mine design, scheduling, and simulation.

Mr Mathews said RPMGlobal’s investment in its growing suite of optimisation and AI tools reflected the evolving requirements and advances in the various ways operations could extract value.

“The ability to optimise production and identify opportunities for improvement across the mining value chain is proving a key competitive advantage in this dynamic operating landscape, and we are proud to offer innovative solutions that are able to optimise operations in ways that would have been unthinkable in the past,” he said.

“Alongside the continued migration of our mining software and data to the cloud, we are looking forward to delivering enhanced value to our global customer base.”