Contributors

Contributors allow users to visualise and quantify the contribution (percentage and tonnage) of various mine sources and stockpile attributes to trains, trucks, barges, shipments and other stockpiles.

Contributors are typically used to track attributes, such as ownership, mining lease, pit, stope, ore type, seam or mining area, as materials of different origin are blended and mixed as they move through the supply chain.

Contributors are used to verify the make-up of a stockpile, train, truck despatch, service trip and shipment. This displays in terms of the contribution, by percentage or tonnage, of the various contributors and contributor analytes. (Note that this is not related to traceability of despatches.)

Contributor Groups

Multiple contributor groups can be configured in the system to track these attributes through the supply chain. An unlimited number of contributors can be configured within each contributor group.

If districts are defined for the company, districts can be defined for the special District Contributor group, so that when invoices are generated for linked contracts, payable analyte contributions can be apportioned to the correct contributing district. The District Contributor group is treated like any other contributing group, that is, their contributions can be traced back through the supply chain. The District Contributor group cannot be deleted.

Yield-based Contributor Groups

Yield is the amount of product extracted from an amount of raw material.

A contributor group can be configured to calculate yield-based contribution. In this process, the actual contributions for a transaction are adjusted, based upon the theoretical yield of each contributor, specified as a percentage for specific points in time.

Contributor Analytes

In addition to the contributors themselves, contributor analyte functionality records the quality contribution for each contributor for the specified analytes.

Example: A stockpile may be made up of material from two different sources, owned by two different companies (A and B). Both companies may have contributed 50% of the tonnage to the stockpile; however, Company A may have only contributed 45% of the main measured analyte and Company B the remainder.

Therefore, contributors and contributor analytes can be used to apportion costs and revenues to different owners, or to calculate royalty payments where royalties vary between different mining leases.

Contributor Group Sources

Mine sources are the source for most contributor groups; however, mine sources are not always modelled in MineMarket. In addition, contributor groups sometimes only start to apply from an intermediate supply chain location. For example, if material goes through a mineral processing plant, tracing contributors only makes sense after the material transformation. Likewise, ownership might only be recorded when material arrives at a location. Therefore, stockpiles or despatches can be contributor group sources.

When you define a stockpile as a contributor source, it forces the stockpile to act like a mine source with respect to contributor calculations. If a stockpile is assigned as a contributor group source in the middle of the supply chain, the contributions for that contributor group to a mine source or stockpile prior to that point will show that contributors are unassigned; that is, they are only assigned from that point onward. Stacking onto that stockpile will not affect the contributor output of that stockpile.

After contributors have been configured, they can be assigned to mine sources and stockpiles and tracked through the supply chain.

Contributor Surveys

A contributor survey is when the contributions of contributors in a contributor group are entered for a mine source or stockpile.

Unassigned Contributor Calculation Issues

Unassigned contributor errors can occur on process flows when an upstream stockpile in the supply chain goes negative for any reason. Unassigned contributor errors can severely impact the calculated production: not only within MineMarket, but also in systems to which MineMarket data is exported.

Less obvious contributor calculation errors occur when flow-through plants (for example, crushers) are allowed to build up unrealistically high stock levels.

In addition to the basic contributor calculation issues, the calculation of contributor analytes is erroneous when material is upgraded in a mineral processing plant.

There are many valid reasons for a stockpile's balance to go negative in MineMarket, including:

Weight determination or estimation errors
Moisture gain or loss
Handling losses
Contamination from other sources

Such gains and losses are usually corrected via survey and other reconciliation mechanisms. These corrections may be on an event basis (for example, stockpile empty), or periodic basis (for example, monthly survey).

Reconciliations and surveys cannot normally be done after every transaction, shift or day. The negative stockpile management functionality within MineMarket can manage null analyte values and contributor values in the period between surveys and reconciliations.

See Stockpile Contributors and Negative Stockpile Configuration for more information and examples.

Unassigned Contributor Redistribution

Unassigned contributors display in the Contributors tab for stockpiles, trains, truck despatches, service trips and shipments when the sum of all contributors within a contributor group is less than 100%. This issue usually arises when a stockpile balance goes negative due to weighing and other errors associated with stacking and reclaiming transactions.

If the unassigned contributors total more than the Unassigned Contributor Redistribution Value warehouse setting and warnings are enabled, a warning (in red) displays on the Current State tab for the stockpile. See Specify Warehouse Settings and Specify Contributor Settings.

There are two ways to manage unassigned contributors on a stockpile:

Set up an automatic redistribution, which is suitable for values smaller than the Unassigned Contributor Redistribution Value. See Set up Automatic Unassigned Contributor Redistribution for a Stockpile.
Conduct a stockpile contributor survey, which corrects weighing errors. See Enter Contributor Data for a Stockpile.

Contributor Filtering and Cut-offs

Contributor groups such as ownership, lease and ore type/seam are typically few in number and there is no need for contributor filtering to improve the display of contributor charts or contributor information.

However, if mining areas, blocks or polygons are set up as contributor groups, the number of contributors within these groups can often number in the thousands or more. This makes contributor charts difficult to view and interpret and editing of contributor information becomes very inefficient.

Dynamic contributor filtering and contributor cut-off functionality removes contributors with zero or very small contributions from the various contributor views associated with stockpiles, trains, truck despatches, service trips and shipments. It also simplifies the editing of contributor data.

Webinar and Video

Datamine held this webinar about using contributors in MineMarket.

A Datamine consultant recorded this video about contributors in MineMarket.