To highlight the importance of short-term surface mine production scheduling in the mining industry, three-dimensional design software dev- eloper Dassault Systèmes held a presentation at the Mine Planning South Africa Conference last month.

The presentation, which was held at the Sinosteel Plaza Conference Centre, in Johannesburg, focused on key aspects of the scheduling process, including the challenges companies face with regard to implementation and improvements that can be made in scheduling methods and input.

Short-term surface mine production scheduling is an operations-based process, the aim of which is to assist mining production over functional time spans for up to 12 months.

“It includes an action plan in the form of a guideline, which concentrates on making long-term mining plans operationally viable and feasible,” Dassault Systèmes GEOVIA mine planning and scheduling principal consultant Neto Paul Kapalata tells Mining Weekly.

Mine production scheduling also ensures that there is a steady flow of product to meet short-term operational needs by deploying improved short-term schedule activities such as dewatering, drilling, charging, blasting, loading, hauling, dumping, stockpiling, blending, through-putting and processing.

Kapalata points out that short-term surface mine production scheduling is dyn- amic and can highlight positive and negative aspects of a project in a real-time environment as well as manage further investing, operating and financing activities for operating mines.

“It can provide answers to many questions related to the viability of an operation and assists in exercising dynamic mine management functions that include planning, leading, organising and controlling.” he says.

Kapalata points out that major challenges in short-term surface mine production scheduling include the supervision of a short-term schedule, which requires effective interaction and cooperation from schedule stakeholders; producing the expected results and providing adequate and reliable support services for these stakeholders to ensure the schedule can produce the expected output.

“Effective, dynamic communication among schedule stakeholders to ensure that everything is completed according to the schedule is another challenge faced by mining com- panies and stakeholders,” he emphasises.

Kapalata notes that the availability of competent occupational health, safety, training and environment support services which assist in establishing, maintaining and implementing applicable standard operating procedures to promote the safe use of resources, also need to be more streamlined.

“Key aspects that need to be improved include operating costs, resources availability, selection, utilisation and efficiency, the decrease of cycle time, planned resource maintenance, equipment, haulage routes and capital-replacement decisions,” he points out.

Scheduling Input

Kapalata notes that short-term surface mine production scheduling input, includes resource, reserve or grade control geological models or block models further attributed with lithological, geological, geotechnical and orebody boundaries.

“The final pit design, including pit phases, should be incorporated into the scheduling process to improve the efficiency of the schedule in conjunction with drilling, charging, blasting and load and haul blocks per pit, per bench.

“The production discount factors, haulage routes, minimal mining units, mining direction and advancement, major and permanent schedule activities, material deposition swell factor and active mining locations for every pit, bench and block should be improved throughout the schedule period.

“Apart from the final waste dump design recommended for waste dumping scheduling, the number of ore stockpiles and waste dump phases to be incorporated into the schedule should also be taken into account, along with product code classifications of in situ material classes to be handled to meet blending requirements. This details how many low-grade, medium-grade and high-grade throughput tons should be achieved per feed per day from different stockpiles,” he says.

Further, Kapalata points out that the scheduling includes the number of project mining resources, such as excavators, shovels and drill rigs needed daily at a process plant for every pit, bench and block, as well as planned fleet maintenance and process plant shutdowns.

Scheduling output

Short-term surface mine production scheduling output, Kapalata notes, includes short-term activities-based schedules, enhanced with graphical results such as bench plans, bench blocks, end-of-period surfaces, Gantt activity charts, animations, and standard and customisable reports compatible with several different systems.

Recommendation

“Short-term schedules should be detailed enough to meet operational stakeholders’ requirements and should highlight the best practice for the operation to produce useful results,” he says, noting that all regular, major and permanent schedule activities by schedule stakeholders should also be included.

“Short-term scheduling is a behavioural-change exercise that requires 100% of the stakeholders’ engagement to work together in implementing the schedule. The short-term schedule should also be able to interpret the medium- and long-term schedules for a particular mining operation,” Kapalata states.

He notes that the software, techniques and technology deployed to build the schedule should be well researched, monitored and controlled to produce the expected results and that there should be short-term scheduling standard operating procedures to adhere to.

“The schedule should be a timed action plan, deployed by schedule stakeholders and it needs to operate under the principle of management functions in a dynamic environment,” Kapalata states.

He concludes that short-term surface mine production scheduling cannot be left in isolation, as it embraces the reality that the schedule is a timed action plan to be deployed by schedule stakeholders in moving, mentally, “from where they are to where they want to be”.

It operates under the principle of management functions where planning focuses on maximising stakeholders’ effectiveness, leading focuses on maximising stakeholders’ involvement, organising focuses on increasing stakeholders’ efficiency and controlling focuses on increasing operational profit in an operational approach that finds both the minima and maxima of any functions, subject to constraints.