Scholarly record

A PRACTICAL SHORT-TERM PRODUCTION SCHEDULING MODEL FOR OPEN PIT MINES

J. Gholamnejad, A. Y. Bafghi

Abstract

Short-term production scheduling determines the sequence of block extraction over time spans of shift, days, weeks or months. The aim of scheduling is to decide which blocks of ore and waste to mine in which time period so that several operational and geometrical constraints can be satisfied simultaneously- like mining and mill capacity, meeting grade requirements, making long-term mine plans operationally feasible, etc. Since the 1960s several operational research based approaches have been developed. In order to producing an optimum mining sequence that satisfy all the requirements, practicality should be considered during the modeling. One aspect of practicality is accessibility of blocks to mining equipments on the same bench. Some researchers have proposed their mathematical based model in order to incorporate accessibility constraints, this incorporation have caused increasing the number of integer variables which itself leading to some difficulty in solving the model in large open pits. In this paper an integer programming based model is developed that incorporates the block accessibility constraints in an efficient manner.

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