About APCOMs

The abbreviation „APCOM“ means „Applications for Computers and Operations Research in the Minerals Industries“. APCOM is a series of well established high-quality scientific conferences which was started already in the early 1960‘s. The APCOM 2019 in Wroclaw is the 39th APCOM.

The APCOM event series has become a major driver of innovation in the minerals industry, facilitating the advancement of computer and operational research methodologies applied to the minerals industry. Thanks to the personal commitments of APCOM’s loyal participants and supporters, the APCOM symposia continue to be a thriving success. A lot of breakthrough innovations have been initially discussed or originated from the APCOM conferences like e.g. Geostatistics and Mining Process Optimization. One of the success factors of APCOM is the intensive high-quality dialogue between Industry and Academia.

The conference is performed bi-annually in changing locations around the globe. Usually, between 200 and 500 participants are expected to join the conference. Due to the fact that Poland hosts a very active mining society, the APCOM is coming to Poland for the first time and has not been in Europe for 20 years a rather high number of participants is expected.

History

APCOM was founded in 1961 by four American universities – the University of Stanford, the University of Arizona, the Pennsylvania State University, and the Colorado School of Mines. The purpose of this conference is to promote the application of computer and operations research in the minerals industry. APCOM has become an international forum to present, discuss, and examine state-of-the-art and emerging technologies in the minerals industry.

The nature of mining is constant for centuries. Over time, the constant aim is to achieve higher productivity: Mechanization and automation were step changes of the past. Well ahead of “digitalization” the term “Process Optimization” was introduced on the APCOM 2005 to become the next step change in achieving higher productivity including key aspects of mining like optimization of material flow, equipment utilization and dispatch, real-time monitoring and much more. Now “digitalization” in mining extends this trend by use of e.g. IT, Big Data and communications to cover all aspects from resource estimation to processing.

APCOM’s since the middle 80’s: