Short Interval Control and Production Reporting Software Guide

If your shift supervisors only find out about a missed production target at the end-of-shift handover, the operation is reacting rather than controlling:

SIC software ranges from digital shift logs to integrated operations hubs:

• Underground SIC Platforms

  Tools built around the sequential cycle of underground mining (drill, blast, muck, bolt), such as CiteOps (Commit Works), Deswik.OPS (Deswik) and GroundHog FMS Underground (GroundHog). These systems track the status of headings and the dependencies between tasks.

• Open Pit Shift Management

  Often integrated with the FMS or running alongside it, these tools focus on operator line-out, equipment pre-starts, and monitoring shift progress against the daily plan.

• Digital Shift Logs & Handovers

  Point solutions that replace paper plods and shift-boss notebooks, so that safety and operational data pass cleanly from one crew to the next.

• Unified Operations Centres

  Enterprise platforms that take in data from the FMS, SCADA and planning tools and show it in one place for a remote operations centre (ROC).

When evaluating SIC software, look for systems that help supervisors make fast decisions rather than adding another data-entry chore.

How do you make production numbers trustworthy from shift log to month end?

Record each movement of material once, at the source, with who logged it, when, where it came from and where it went. Build the monthly figure from those records instead of re-keying shift totals into a spreadsheet, and keep every correction as a new entry with a reason rather than overwriting the original. Only count material as production once it reaches the status your reporting rules define, and give every tonne one source and one reporting area, so it cannot sit in two totals.

A current case shows why it matters. In October 2026, Chile's state miner Codelco said it was investigating new evidence of over-reported copper production in 2024 and 2025 at its Ministro Hales and Salvador divisions. In Codelco's words, "the same material was recorded as production by more than one division." An earlier audit of its 2025 reporting had found that materials still needing further processing were reported as finished product. Codelco has brought in EY for an external audit (Reuters via Mining Weekly, 7 October 2026). The reports do not say which systems were involved. Both problems, double counting and counting material too early, are the kind a production reporting system can be set up to catch.

As of 12 October 2026, the MSR directory lists 14 mine operations and short interval control products from 11 vendors. In their profiles, 11 of the 14 mention shifts, 2 mention reconciliation (AVEVA Production Management and MineRP Platform) and none mention an audit trail. Profile wording is a starting point for a shortlist, not proof of capability, so put the checks below to every vendor.

Key Performance Metrics to Track:

The right software in this category should measurably improve:

The ROI of Short Interval Control comes from turning "lost time" into productive time. It typically comes from:

What can a control room rollout deliver?

Most published figures for this kind of project come from vendors, so read them as claims. One recent example is a vendor-supplied article from Micromine about two Pitram projects (Mining Weekly, 8 October 2026):

• At the Çayeli Bakır copper and zinc mine in Türkiye, Micromine says Pitram and a dedicated mine control room gave real-time visibility of people, equipment and production. It reports an average productivity increase of 18 per cent, including 39 per cent in development, 29 per cent in shotcrete and 26 per cent in rock bolting.
• At Rana Gruber's iron ore operation in Norway, the same article says the project replaced fragmented reporting with one source of operational data. A Rana Gruber mining engineer is quoted saying the team spent less time "chasing spreadsheets and checking numbers".

These are vendor-reported results, not independent measurements. Before you use a figure like this in a business case, ask the vendor for the baseline period, how productivity was defined, what else changed on site at the same time, and whether you can speak to the site. In the MSR directory, Pitram is listed under fleet management and dispatch.

The Rana Gruber example also points to a gain that is easy to miss: when supervisors and engineers stop reconciling spreadsheets by hand, that time goes back into running the mine, and the numbers are easier to defend when someone asks where they came from.