Award Winning Software! We are proud to announce that Mining Magazine has awarded Datamine's Operation Scheduler application the coveted title of Software Category Winner for 2005, reflecting the enormous benefits that it can add to your business woth a complete short and medium term planning solution. For more information on Operation Scheduler, see below, or select the Information Sheet link above. Alternatively contact us and we'll be happy to discuss your requirements with you.

Operation Scheduler solves short and medium term mine planning problems including:

• Conversion of long-term strategic mining plans into practical monthly or weekly mining schedules.
• Generation of short and medium-term schedules to meet production targets, blending requirements and other mining constraints.

Function

Schedule mine production week by week, month by month, or at any other time scale, to meet economic and operational objectives.

Scope

Open pit multi-phase (multi-pushback) mines. Multi-mine operations can be scheduled as easily as a single mine.

Input data

Scheduling requires economic and geological data that has to be imported into the program. The possible sources of such data include NPV Scheduler's LOM (life of mine) schedules and MFO mining sequences, as well as standard block models generated by many mining software packages.

Scheduling paradigm

Operation Scheduler makes a distinction between separate mines, phases within a single mine, and benches within each phase. The smallest unit in this hierarchy is the phase-bench unit, which for scheduling purposes is further subdivided into smaller mining units called Operational Stages (OS) and Operational Blocks (OB).

An Operational Stage is a collection of contiguous cells of a phase-bench unit that for operational reasons have to be mined together. The order in which the Operational Stages are mined within the same, or even different, phase-bench units can be restricted by defining inter stage dependencies.

An Operational Stage can optionally be subdivided into smaller Operational Blocks to provide more choices to the scheduling engine. Operational Blocks within a given Operational Stage can be mined in any order (there are no dependencies between Operational Blocks). Both Operational Stages and Operational Blocks are graphically represented by polygonal boundaries that can be digitized in the Mine Scheduler document or imported from external applications. Once the mining units and the dependencies between them are defined, you set the scheduling objectives and the program's mathematical engine generates solutions. The resulting schedule is a list of mining units to be mined period by period or a sequence of block model cells where each cell has an attached time label indicating the period when it will be mined.

Scheduling objectives

The scheduling objectives are set as rates and ratios to reflect most mine planning considerations including mining rates, production quotas, ore qualities, blending, haulage and others. Profit and NPV maximization, although not of primary concern for short-term planning, is used for schedule selection when there are multiple solutions meeting the operational requirements.

Haulage Analysis Optimization

The control of truck hours is of major importance when generating operational schedules. To provide a high level of definition, the haulage route from a bench to a destination is divided into four components by specifying the Equivalent Flat Haul distances between five fixed points - the load point (eg shovel), the bench exit point (eg entry to ramp), the pit exit point (eg top of ramp), the destination entry point and the destination dump point. The destination dump point can be variable over time to allow for stockpile building.

Step by step

Import LOM Schedule or block model with data for planning over a desired time horizon, for example two years. Digitize or import mining units (Operational Stages and Operational Blocks). Check reports to see if all material intended for mining is included in Operational Stages boundaries. Define dependencies between mine phases and Operational Stages (optional). Set time definition and define mining objectives. Optimize (once or more times). Export the mining sequence, if desired. If you are working with a LOM Schedule, choose "Open Special" command from the File menu to continue scheduling for a next year or two (or any other period) in a new document.