R600K in Drilling Cost Savings Identified in One Month After Replacing Spreadsheets Across an Entire Platinum Mine, Pilansberg Platinum Mines

What Problem Was PPM Facing?

PPM operates as an open-pit platinum mine. When NxGN first engaged with the operation in 2015, the entire production tracking system ran on Excel spreadsheets. Every discipline maintained its own files independently: drilling, blasting, load and haul, and plant operations. Consequently, the daily production report required manual compilation, and contractor payment certificates consumed weeks of cross-referencing per cycle.

The Critical Risk

The most critical risk sat in a single file. Specifically, the monthly plant budget-versus-actual production data, including the ounces reported to the market, were stored in an Excel file with no access controls. Moreover, it lacked auditing, versioning, and an approval workflow. The file had been maintained since the plant’s first month of operation and was growing too large to sustain. In essence, market-facing data lacked governance.

Why This Was Hard to Solve

This wasn’t replacing one system; it was digitising an entire mine’s data practices. Every discipline had its own capture requirements, approval hierarchies, and reporting needs. Plant data came from SCADA historians. Contractor payments needed to reconcile against approved production data. Furthermore, the rollout had to be progressive because you cannot shut down production-tracking in a working mine to build something new.

What Did NxGN Build?

NxGN delivered a centralised mining data platform that replaced every manual capture process across PPM’s mining value chain. The platform evolved over 13 phases, from basic production bookings through to a comprehensive operational management system.

From Spreadsheets to Governed Data

Every discipline moved from Excel to web-based capture with role-based access through PPM’s Active Directory. Importantly, every piece of production data now follows a capture-review-approve-lock workflow before it becomes part of the official record. As a result, PPM gained its first audit trail on production data. The market-reported ounces that once lived in an uncontrolled spreadsheet now sit in an auditable, version-controlled system with proper governance.

Automated Plant Data via SCADA Integration

The platform connects directly to PPM’s SCADA Historian database. Specifically, it pulls hundreds of process tags covering crushing, milling, flotation, and thickening at hourly intervals. This eliminated manual data capture in the control room entirely. Furthermore, configurable timing rules ensure the right values feed into the right reports without human intervention.

Contractor Payment Reconciliation

The platform generates payment certificates for drilling and blasting contractors directly from approved production data. This replaced weeks of manual cross-referencing with automated reconciliation. Consequently, teams now have a defensible record from capture through to invoice for any disputed payments.

Unified Reporting

Twenty-four production charts, daily reports, shift reports, and cost summaries all draw from a single integrated dataset. Reports are available through an intranet portal with access control and audit logging. This replaced email-distributed Excel reports entirely.

Technical detail: Platform architecture and 13-phase evolution

The NxGN Warehouse comprises NxGN Acquire for data capture and validation, and NxGN Operate for production tracking, equipment utilisation, payment certificates, cost reporting, and management reporting. The platform was deployed on PPM’s intranet with Active Directory authentication. The 13 phases span from initial open cast bookings (October 2015) through plant daily report automation, drilling module overhaul, blasting enhancement, mining costs, platform licensing across 87 equipment pieces, SCADA Historian integration, data warehouse development, engineering downtime, HR capture, SHEQ capture, and ongoing SLA support through 2024.

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What Were the Results?

Metric	Before	After
Drilling cost visibility	Month-end analysis only	Daily efficiency per rig per contractor; R600K savings in one month
Market-reported ounces	Unversioned, unlocked Excel file	Governed platform with approval workflow and audit trail
Production data capture	Disconnected spreadsheets per discipline	Centralised web platform across all disciplines
Plant data	Manual transposition from Excel	Automated SCADA integration (hundreds of tags; hourly)
Contractor payments	Weeks of manual cross-referencing	System-generated certificates from approved data
Approval governance	None	Capture → review → approve → lock per discipline

Why R600K in One Month Matters

NxGN’s platform identified R600,000 in contractor drilling cost savings in just one month. Indeed, this figure demonstrates the immediate value of making operational data transparent. Once drilling efficiency became visible per rig per contractor per day, performance conversations changed fundamentally. Consequently, teams moved from end-of-month disputes to real-time accountability.

A Nine-Year Partnership

The nine-year duration of this engagement reflects sustained trust. Each phase built on the last, driven by operational needs identified through ongoing collaboration with PPM’s management team. The evolution from basic bookings replacement to full operational platform shows what becomes possible when a mining operation commits to replacing spreadsheets with governed data.