McCarthy P L, Internal AMC Paper

Production Scheduling
By P L McCarthy 1

Production scheduling is an integral part of the mine planning process. Mine designs are prepared iteratively, with constant reassessment of the mining schedule. The process is necessarily laborious and only a minor part of it can be computerised. Scheduling is required for the development and production activities in underground and open pit mines. Types of schedules include: life of mine plan; 5 year plan; annual plan; weekly and/or monthly schedules.

an annual budget where the possible variations are not great. Prima Vera (which was recently ported to Windows) and similar packages are really designed for the construction of high-rise buildings or bridges and tracking components down to the "last nut and bolt". The form of output is not suited to mining so it is best downloaded into a spreadsheet for final analysis and presentation. It is a trap to develop a very complex multi-year model using the above systems, because changes which inevitably occur in mining practice render the subsequent schedule meaningless. One mine recently spent six man-months developing a schedule which showed every metre of development over the next five years. The schedule was obsolete before it was completed, and it could not readily be updated so was abandoned. Any system more complex than the generic ones like MS Project will require a dedicated operator. As with geological modelling systems, constant involvement is required to maintain skill levels after an initial learning period of about six months. These are not tools which will reduce the work load of a general mine planning engineer. Care must be taken to ensure that the scheduling function is well documented and sufficiently simple that staff transfers can be accommodated regularly without total disruption of the planning function. Most mine scheduling can be done using ordinary spreadsheets. These are very flexible and easily understood by others. Presentation using graphs, bar charts and time bars is excellent. Spreadsheets handle the grade and tonnage computations while leaving the engineer free to consider the problem "holistic".

The life of mine plan is usually conceptual, including all indicated resources and usually assuming some percentage conversion (say 50%) of inferred resources into ore reserves. The 5 year plan should be based on proven and probable ore reserves although for gold mines with erratic grade distributions ore reserves may never exceed one to two years because of the difficulty of proving them by drilling. The annual plan should be based on proven reserves which in an underground mine should have the primary access development already completed even if the detailed level and extraction development is not.

Commercial Software
Some geological modelling and mine planning software (e.g. Datamine, Surpac, Medsystem) includes a scheduling function. This may be based on linear programming or other optimisation techniques. One package designed for surface coal mining is XPAC which works well in "two-dimensional" orebodies but has limitations in underground mining or in pits with complex orebody geometries. Generic scheduling packages such as Timeline, Harvard Total Project Manager and Microsoft Project can all be used for mine scheduling at the cost of substantially simplifying the considerations involved. These are really PERT/Critical Path Method programmes and do not deal successfully with incremental tonnages and weighted average grades, or the interaction between development, stoping and filling schedules. More complex project management tools such as Prima Vera can be adapted to mining. They are most successful if used for

Open Pit Scheduling

The objectives of open pit scheduling may include: providing a steady and balanced ore feed to the mill or a steady blended product such as iron ore for direct shipping; maximising the NPV of the project by accessing higher grades early and always filling the mill with the best available feed; providing a steady, balanced work load for the ore and waste mining equipment fleets; deferring the mining of waste as long as possible to minimise the Present Value of the stripping cost; defining pushback campaigns to maximise waste mining efficiencies and/or minimise contract mining costs;

1.

MAusIMM, CPMin, Managing Director, Australian Mining Consultants Pty Ltd, 19/114 William Street, Melbourne Vic 3000. E-mail: pmccarthy@ausmin.com.au

Production Scheduling

combining ore and/or waste blocks to form minimum bench widths so that equipment can operate efficiently and safely, and to avoid the need for costly "dozing down" to a lower bench; maintaining haulroad access to working benches and maintaining an effective sump; providing sufficient face length for the design production rate; providing time in the mining cycle for grade control and for opening up a box cut on a new bench; optimising the blend of production from two or more pits while managing active and low-grade stockpiles.

be based on minor elements (e.g. phosphorus) rather than on the percentage grade of the primary product.

Underground Production Scheduling

The objectives of underground scheduling are similar to those for open pits and some objectives are identical. They include: providing a steady and balanced ore feed to the mill or a steady blended product for direct shipping; maximising the NPV of the project by accessing higher grades early and always filling the mill with the best available feed; providing a steady, balanced workload for the development and production equipment fleets; deferring development as long as possible consistent with access for exploration, infill drilling and stope development; setting development rates which are unit multiples of the capacity of a standard development crew or fleet; minimising the number of active working areas to reduce the cost of supervision and services; minimising the time development has to be kept open in recognition that there is a maintenance cost for development; maximising the size of stopes or stoping blocks while keeping a minimum number of active stopes to protect against stope outages; providing time in the development and stoping cycle for surveying, infill drilling, planning, ground support, and production drilling; sequencing the stopes from bottom up or from top down according to the mining method and filling requirements; minimising the requirement for crown and bridge pillars; minimising broken stocks which tie up working capital and ore at risk of re-cementing insitu. sequencing according to geotechnical requirements to control mining-induced stresses; maintaining ventilation and services as required; provide a steady usage of backfill and maximise the utilisation of backfill material; minimise the need to remove development waste (mullock) from the mine.

Several of the above objectives can be contradictory, so judgement and experience must be applied. All scheduling of mining operations is complex. For example, great precision is required in scheduling dragline stripping operations to minimise cost and specific software has been developed to assist the engineer. The sequence of activities needed to prepare an open pit schedule is generally as follows: optimise the final pit shell; prepare a detailed design of the final pit including final catch benches, batters and haul road; by increasing costs or reducing product price, reoptimise one or two intermediate pits; define two or more (maximum four) phases of pit development with roughly equal ore and waste volumes based on the intermediate pits; describe the minimum pre-strip required to provide enough face length in ore in the Phase 1 pit to permit the design production rate; schedule ore and waste mining through the pit phases with the aim of satisfying the objectives previously listed; prepare a series of pit development plans showing how access is maintained, say on an annual basis. Note that the pit never conforms exactly with the sequence of pit phases; the phases are simply concepts which enable the scheduling to be done.

Once this broad schedule has been prepared for the life of the final pit, more detailed schedules are prepared on an annual basis. Usually only the forthcoming year is scheduled in detail on a weekly or monthly basis. To do this, the annual pit development plan is superimposed on the resource block model and quantities are taken off at a height of one flitch or working bench and the limits of weekly digging are shown. In practice, the schedule may show the next month on a daily or weekly basis and then monthly limits thereafter. There is no point in planning in detail beyond the period in which there is confidence in meeting the schedule, because adjustments to the schedule would require the work to be redone. At this level of "mechanically" working through a single bench, computer scheduling packages can be useful. For products such as iron ore which require blending through multiple stockpiles, the scheduler must keep track of the stockpiles as well as mining within the pit. The blending may

It is usual to have rules about maintaining development ahead of production. For example in a longhole stoping operation these might be: primary access development two years ahead of production; stope development one year ahead of production; production drilling six months ahead of production; broken stocks three months ahead of production.

In another operation these times might be halved depending on the size of stopes and past experience with interruptions due to massive hangingwall or crown pillar failures.

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Production Scheduling

Each longhole stope will have a production profile which includes a build-up, a period of steady production, then a tailing off and final cleanup. This can be modelled as three equal time intervals: 25% of tonnes, rate starts at zero and rises to full rate. 50% of tonnes at full rate. 25% of tonnes, starting at full rate and falling to zero.

reduce their width to minimise cement requirements. Repeat the above steps if required; estimate the production profile for each stope and prepare a time line showing how consistent production is maintained; check the filling schedule and matching the stoping schedule if required; schedule the necessary development with key points being the provision of ventilation and services; check the required development rates and modify the stoping schedule if they are excessive.

This production profile must be recognised when scheduling Figure 1.

Figure 1

Underground mine scheduling requires a much greater geological knowledge than open pit scheduling. In an open pit, a statistical approach to ore occurrences may be taken provided the expected tonnage and grade are found "somewhere on the bench". An underground mine requires detailed geological interpretation and "hard" boundaries to the orebody model. Development rates should be set at some multiple of the capacity of a jumbo or development crew working efficiently with good utilisation. The degree of flexibility will depend on the industrial relations environment and whether multi-skilling exists. There is a modern trend not to distinguish between development and production operators.

The full rate will be determined not by the absolute size of the stope but by the number of draw points and the production mucking capability, including orepass and haulage capacities. The steps in underground production scheduling are as follows; calculate diluted tonnes and grade for each stope; select the mining sequence, defining primary and secondary stopes and permanent pillars, with the aim of satisfying the objectives previously listed; re-define stopes if necessary to suit the schedule, for example to provide sloping walls in primaries or to

The achievable development rate will depend on the manning and equipment, the number of available faces, travelling distance between faces and the ground support requirement. If raise boring is contracted out, schedules should be based on campaigns which minimise mobilisation costs. The importance of the filling schedule should not be underestimated. A useful measure is the cumulative void, which is the difference between the mining and filling schedules. If this continues to grow then instability or loss of access are likely.

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