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Annual MineSight® Activity Planner

Seminar Introduction
MINTEC, Inc. is in the process of developing MineSight® Activity Planner (AP), which
is a quantitative management tool that supports activity based planning, scheduling,
and reconciliation of mining projects. The tool is designed to be used for short-range
mine planning to provide resource constrained project scheduling. It can also be used for
detailed scheduling and resource allocation depending on whether the tool is used for
tactical or operational level mine planning.
In essence, MineSight® AP is a software application that supports the creation of
resource constrained planning and scheduling networks whereby a mine planner can
assign work activities to mine resources and time periods in a manner that is constrained
by both precedence and resource availability interdependencies. Mine planners can use
the tool to produce resource-constrained feasible and practical mine plans and resource
allocation schedules.
The MineSight® AP application implements a multidimensional resource constrained
scheduling chart in the form of a Planning Board, which is a planning tool that uses a
type of Gantt chart as its main mechanism to represent a plan and the means to modify the
plan by modifying the chart. Work activities are assigned to one or more resources and a
time period, and can be sequenced according to predecessor and successor relationships.
Thus the work activities are organized by time, resource availability, and precedence
relationships among tasks.
In addition to planning and scheduling, MineSight® AP supports mine planning
reconciliation and project control through the comparison of mine plans versus production
results. Scheduled work activities when executed are then recorded in the schedule
as completed work activities displaying actual start times, durations, and resource
assignment. Unplanned and unexpected work activities that are the result of delays,
breakdowns, or other departures from the plan, are also tracked and recorded in the
schedule along with their reasons. Schedule comparison between planned and actual
activities provide a kind of project/process control that goes beyond the cybernetic model
of management control in that schedules of activities planned versus actual are compared
so that deviations can be identified and root causes determined.
MineSight® AP is a tool that mine planners can use to improve the quality of short-range
mine planning. A discussion of the benefits of activity based mine planning can be found
in Appendix 1, Why Activity Based Short-Range Mine Planning?
MineSight® Activity Planner Features
MineSight® AP is a planning board Gantt chart where resources are listed in the left
most column along the vertical axis, a date and time scale run along the top horizontal
axis, and activities are represented by rectangular bars denoting task duration. On the
chart, activities are assigned to time intervals and resources. With the use of the Gantt
chart to plan activities, mine planners can transition traditional short-range mine plans
into practical, feasible, detailed, realistic, activity based, resource allocated schedules. See
Figure 1 MineSight® AP Planning Board.

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Figure 1, MineSight® AP Planning Board

In the application, resources can be used to model a range of entities in the mine
environment such as material to be mined, heavy mining equipment, auxiliary equipment,
and various mine infrastructure components. Mine planners can define resources for
anything for which they have an interest in planning or controlling. Generally resources
have some purpose, utility, or capability—mining cuts supply material, shovels load, truck
fleets haul, etc. In other words, resources are entities that can perform and facilitate work
or they are consumed in the work process.
MineSight® AP organizes resources into collections or classes according to the primary
capability of the resource. The loading units would belong to one class, the haulage fleets
belong to another, and drills to their own class, etc. Mine planners can organize resources
collections to suit their own planning needs and subsequently organize the resources
within them. The planning board will then display the schedule of the activities assigned
to resources one class of resources at a time.
In MineSight® AP, work is decomposed and modeled as a set of activities each with a
strategic purpose, starting time, and duration. Activities also require the capabilities that
resource entities can provide in order for the task to be undertaken. By specifying the set
of resource capability requirements, mine planners can model a range of activities from
simple ones requiring few resource types to complicated ones requiring several resource
types. For example, excavating ore would require a loader or shovel, a fleet of trucks,
and the material on the bench. In the schedule, the planner would have to allocate the
excavation activity to a shovel, a haulage fleet composed of a number of trucks, and the
mining cut.
Planning with MineSight® AP involves the assignment of work activities to time
intervals and resources. Each activity is assigned to one or more resources for a given
time period so that no two or more tasks can claim the same resources at the same time
unless the resources are specifically and purposely shared. In this fashion, the application
facilitates scheduling of activities to limited resources in non-conflicting ways that consider
resource availability constraints based on resource capability. See Figures 2, 3, and 4,
MineSight® AP Planning Board.

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Figure 2, MineSight® AP Planning Board

Figure 3, MineSight® AP Planning Board

Figure 4, MineSight® AP Planning Board

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 Resource availability constraints are important to planning in that they cause mine
planners to schedule activities sequentially that might otherwise be accomplished
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simultaneously. As resources are completely allocated to activities for a given time period,
additional tasks have to be scheduled into the future. MineSight® AP, in a sense, uses
multiple dimensions of resource availability constraints because activities have multiple
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capability requirements and resources are modeled to provide a single capability at a time.
Thus, an activity will occupy several resources each of which is constrained by availability.
Mine planners have to assign activities to avoid resource conflicts multidimensionally.
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In addition to resource constraints, MineSight® AP, like other activity scheduling
network applications, supports the predecessor-successor dependency relationships
whereby work activities can be sequenced according to technological considerations apart
from resource availability constraints. Activities can be ordered sequentially based on
precedence dependency—task B can’t be started before task A has been completed. Mine
planners can use this feature to constraint the execution of activities in logical mining
sequence. Material has to be drilled and shot before it can be excavated, or bench 5750 has
to be mined before bench 5700, etc. Precedence relationships in a sense constrain activities
to a sequence when they are not allocated to any common resources.
Depending on the level of planning detail employed, MineSight® AP can be used
operationally to allocate mine resources to maximize productivity and equipment
utilization because it facilitates the assignment of work to resources but it does it in a way
that respects task precedence and resource availability constraints. Planners can create
practical, feasible, detailed, and realistic resource allocation schedules.
MineSight® AP supports dynamic scheduling whereby plans can be easily updated to
reflect the actual conditions and situation in the mine. Once activities have been assigned
on the planning board they can be removed or reassigned only if they are still pending
execution. A scheduled activity once begun becomes an actual activity with the actual
starting time. When it is completed or ended, it records the actual duration and ending
time. Not only does this feature prevent plans from quickly becoming obsolete bearing
little resemblance to current mine progress, it also acts as a documentation device in that
it records the history of work activity and provides the starting basis to project current
schedules into the future.
In addition to scheduled activities, unplanned and unforeseen activities and disturbance
events that actually occur can also be recorded in the schedule complete with an
explanation as to their occurrence. In this fashion, MineSight® AP can record the time,
duration, and reason for operational departures from the mine plan. Combined with the
ability to compare schedules side by side, MineSight® AP is able to provide mine planning
reconciliation that explains plan departures in terms of events that occur and reasons for
them. With this information, mine planners can determine the root causes to mine plan
versus operational discrepancies and either correct the planning or operational practices
responsible. Plans can be improved, assumptions examined, and practices corrected.
Additionally, MineSight® AP will graph various mine planning and production
parameters associated with the schedule. In a region below the Gantt chart, the mine
planner can graph data associated with activities such as resource availability, utilization,
and performance. The graphs provide another way for MineSight® AP to compare and
reconcile mine plans and schedules.
Although initially MineSight®AP will not optimize mine plans automatically, it will
facilitate mine planners in finding feasible, practical, resource constrained schedules that
they can manually optimize. The application will display the critical sequence of activities
in the schedule, that when shortened, will optimize the productivity and utilization when
considering all resources simultaneously. Activities in the critical sequence can potentially
be shortened or reassigned to avoid resource bottlenecks and thus reduce slack time for
other resources. Future versions of MineSight® AP will employ optimization heuristics.
MineSight® Activity Planner Usage Scenarios
Building a Plan From Mining Cuts
The mine planner builds an activity based short-range mine plan by first using
MineSight® Interactive Planner (IP) to generate mine material cuts for the planning periods

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22nd of interest. From these material cuts, MineSight® AP resources, activities, and assignments
are derived. Material cuts become material resources and the mining activities that consume

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the planning periods, and they are allocated to the material resources they consume.
Additionally, the mining activities are optionally allocated to the loading equipment and

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mine planner can assign the activities to mining equipment of his choosing. In this way, the
mine planner has created a basic schedule that includes the major productions tasks at a
macro level scale.
The mine planner can then use MineSight® AP to subdivide each long duration mining
activity into a series of shorter duration activities so that he can intersperse auxiliary
support and maintenance activities. For instance, an activity representing the preventative
maintenance of a shovel can be inserted into the schedule between successive mining
activities. In this way, the mine planner can develop an activity based plan at whatever
level of detail he requires.
Normal Course of Action
1. The planner creates mine material cuts in MineSight® IP for a given planning period
and saves them to a database.
2. The planner opens MineSight® AP and imports the material cut data from the
database.
3. MineSight® AP converts the mining cuts to a material resources and corresponding
mining activities.
4. MineSight® AP inserts the material resources into the resource column of the schedule.
5. MineSight® AP inserts the mining activities into the schedule at the correct time
intervals assigned to the correct material and equipment resources.
6. The planner subdivides each long duration mining activity into a sequence of shorter
duration activities.
7. For each shovel, the mine planner inserts preventative maintenance activities into the
schedule among the mining activities.
8. The mine planner creates and inserts auxiliary support activities into the schedule.
9. The mine planner allocates equipment resources for the auxiliary support activities
10. The mine planner saves and presents the schedule.
Alternative Course of Action
1. MineSight® AP inserts the mining activities into the schedule at the correct time
intervals assigned to the correct material resources. (Branch from Step 5)
2. The planner assigns the mining activities to both shovels and haulage fleets.
3. The planner subdivides each long duration mining activity into a sequence of shorter
duration activities.
4. For each shovel, the mine planner inserts preventative maintenance activities into the
schedule among the mining activities.
5. The mine planner creates and inserts auxiliary support activities into the schedule.
6. The mine planner allocates equipment resources for the auxiliary support activities.
7. The mine planner saves and presents the schedule.
Building a Plan From Production Drilling Patterns
The mine planner builds an activity based short-range mine plan by first using the
MineSight® IP to generate production drilling patterns for a planning period of interest.
From these drill patterns, MineSight® AP resources, activities, and assignments are
derived. Patterns become one or more bench resources and drilling and blasting activities
that consume them. The activities are placed in the schedule according to time interval
that represents the planning period, and they are allocated to the benches they consume.
Additionally, the drilling activities are optionally allocated to the drilling equipment
that was associated with each pattern. Alternatively, the mine planner can assign the

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drilling activities to drills of his choosing. In this way, the mine planner has created a basic
schedule that includes the productions production drilling tasks.
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The mine planner can then use MineSight® AP to reorganize the drilling and blasting
activities into a practical and logical order and intersperse auxiliary support and
maintenance activities. For instance, an activity representing the preventative maintenance
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of the drills can be inserted into the schedule between successive drilling activities, and
activities representing bench preparation can also be added. In this way, the mine planner
can develop an activity based plan at whatever level of detail he requires.
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Normal Course of Action
1. The planner creates production-drilling patterns in MineSight® IP for a given planning
period and saves them to a database.
2. The planner opens MineSight® AP and imports the production-drilling patterns data
from the database.
3. MineSight® AP converts the production-drilling patterns to bench resources and
corresponding drilling and blasting activities.
4. MineSight® AP inserts the bench resources into the resource column of the schedule.
5. MineSight® AP inserts the drilling and blasting activities into the schedule at the
correct time intervals assigned to the correct bench and drilling equipment.
6. The planner reorganizes the drilling and blasting activities in the schedule.
7. For each drill, the mine planner inserts preventative maintenance activities into the
schedule among the drilling activities.
8. The mine planner creates and inserts bench preparation activities into the schedule.
9. The mine planner allocates a bulldozer for the bench preparations activities.
10. The mine planner saves and presents the schedule
Alternative Course of Action
1. MineSight® AP inserts the drilling and blasting activities into the schedule at the
correct time intervals assigned to the correct bench. (Branch from Step 5)
2. The planner assigns the drilling activities to drills.
3. The planner reorganizes the drilling and blasting activities in the schedule.
4. For each drill the mine planner inserts preventative maintenance activities into the
schedule among the drilling activities.
5. The mine planner creates and inserts bench preparation activities into the schedule.
6. The mine planner allocates a bulldozer for the bench preparations activities.
7. The mine planner saves and presents the schedule.
MineSight® Activity Planner Design Approach
MINTEC has taken a design approach to MineSight® AP that promotes realism in formal
detailed activity based plans where productivity and resource utilization is maximized and
potential resource availability conflicts are avoided. The design also promotes schedules
that can be dynamically updated as situations evolve in the mine environment.
MineSight® AP is being designed with a bias towards resource allocation rather than
simple precedence relationship activity based scheduling. In all types of projects, work
activities are constrained by a least two types of relationships—precedence dependencies
and resource availability constrains. Precedence relationships model the processor-
successor technological ordering of tasks such as ore has to be drilled and blasted before
it can be excavated. Resource availability constraints model the reality that equipment
is required to perform mining activities and thus limited numbers of resources can only
perform a certain number of tasks simultaneously.
Although MineSight® AP uses both types of relationships, it emphasizes scheduling with
resource constraints because simple precedence based activity planning implicitly assumes
resources are available in unlimited supply or at least there are sufficient resources
available for each activity to be scheduled sometime between its possible starting data and
deadline. Competing claims for the same resources are not explicitly considered. However,
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22nd in mining and depending on the time frame considered, heavy mining equipment is fully
utilized and fixed in number as few mining companies have spare idle equipment waiting

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Long-range mine planning tends to be biased towards precedence relationships and
less constrained by resources. Material excavations have to proceed in an ordered fashion

Seminar based on geometry and economics—high-grade material near the surface is mined first.
Equipment resource levels required for the planned excavations are determined and if
additional equipment is required, it can be purchased.
The reverse is true for short-range mine planning, it tends to be biased towards resource
constraints and less by precedence relationships. For shorter time periods when work
activities are about to be executed, precedence relationships aren’t as clearly discernable
while resource availability constraints are of immediate concern. Work activities that could
be executed simultaneously based on precedence relationships may compete for limited
resources and must be scheduled sequentially. In the short term, order is less important
as task precedence relationships may be non-existent, unknown, or soft. For some
mining activities, task boundaries can be blurred as one task runs into another. Resource
availability constraints however are firm and very tangible.
MineSight® AP can model complex activities that rely on a coordination of several
resources simultaneously thus simplifying work scheduling for mine planners. A mine
planner can incorporate several work functions within a task such as loading and hauling.
He must then assign the task to a shovel and fleet of trucks for a given time interval. By
explicitly allocating resources to the task, the mine planner can avoid resource conflicts
because each resource can only be assigned to one task at a time. Complex activities, when
combined with multiple dimensions of resource constraints, promote realism in planning
as resources have to be properly allocated.
To be effective, schedules and mine plans must keep up with the changing situations
and requirements that occur in mines as work progresses. MineSight® AP is designed
to facilitate dynamically evolving schedules that the mine planner can keep updated
by adding, removing, and resigning activities to resources and/or time intervals. Not
all activities are known before hand so they can be added as they are discovered. Some
activities have to be cancelled before any work has been done and some activities must be
reassigned to other resources or time periods.
The mine planner can also indicate when activities have been successfully completed
or interrupted once work has begun due to some exceptional circumstance. In either case,
the activity with actual starting time, duration, and resource assignment are permanently
recorded in the schedule. The schedule as such serves as a historical document of actual
mining work and can be used for comparison with earlier archived versions of the schedule.
MineSight® AP facilitates the creation of early start resource constrained feasible activity
based work schedules. Limited resource project schedules can be optimized either in
terms of resource leveling or allocation using a variety of strategies. Resource leveling
involves reducing peak requirements by shifting slack activities to non-peak periods
without extending the overall project by pushing work into future. Resource allocation
involve assigning tasks to a fixed amount of resources according to scheduling heuristics
that determine which lower priority tasks are postponed if total requirements for a given
period exceed resources.
Although the initial version of MineSight® AP will not provide automatic optimization,
it will facilitate the easy manipulation of schedules so that mine planners can quickly
manually optimize schedules with a reasonable amount of effort. Traditionally, people
optimize activity based plans by identifying the critical path of tasks and then attempt to
shorten it. Although limited resource scheduling does not have true critical paths due to
the resource constraints, under certain circumstances critical sequences of tasks can occur
which are identifiable with MineSight® AP. Mine planners can then examine the critical
sequence of tasks to determine if reassigning lower priority tasks can shorten it.
Activity scheduling optimization is usually attempted using a number of different
heuristics depending on the nature of the work or the industry in which it is employed.
Typically activities are prioritized giving higher priority to slackless tasks that have

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durations with a higher degree of uncertainty. In other words, higher priority is given to
tasks with little flexibility as to their timing, and their duration can’t be forecasted with
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any certainty.
With regards to other activities that are not apart of the critical sequence, many
optimization heuristics attempt to postpone these tasks as late as possible without
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increasing the length of the overall project. This strategy is well suited in construction
projects where there is a fixed price contract and deferring any expense into the future
increases net present value of the project. However, in mining, the bulk of the capital
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investment is made at the beginning of the project so mining companies want to realize
production-based revenue as quickly as possible. MineSight® AP is an application that
facilitates early start resource constrained feasible schedules that the mine planner can
manually optimize.
In addition to planning and scheduling, MineSight® AP is designed to support
reconciliation whereby mine planners can compare plans with actual results. Schedules
are initially created with activities forecasted with respect to their starting time, durations,
and resource assignments. As activities are actually executed, they remain in the schedule
according to their actual starting time, durations, and resource assignments. For any given
time period, mine planners can compare an initial version of the schedule with a later
versions to determine how closely the mine operations was able to follow the initial plan.
In most mining environments however, work rarely goes exactly to plan due to
exceptional circumstances. Work can be delayed due to lack of equipment or supplies and
work can be stopped due to equipment breakdown. Unforeseen events occur that require
unplanned work to be undertaken. MineSight® AP captures these unplanned events as
disturbance activities. Disturbance activities are inserted in the schedule at their actual
starting time and duration, and assigned to affected resources. They end, interrupt, pre-
empt, and postpone normal activities depending on the circumstance in the mine. Most
importantly, disturbance activities record the reason for their occurrence so that mine
planners can analysis this data to improve both mine planning and operating practices
through understanding the root causes for these disturbances.
With the aforementioned design approach MineSight® AP is well suited to support
activity based short-range mine planning.
Appendix 1
Why Activity Based Short-Range Mine Planning?
Activity based planning improves short-range mine planning because it:
• Is a useful planning method
• Increases planning detail
• Increases planning realism
• Enables plan optimization
• Enables plan reconciliation
• Improves communication and collaboration
• Demonstrates plan viability
Short-range mine planning insufficiently considers:
• Mining Context
• Auxiliary Support Activities
• Maintenance Schedules
• Performance Indicators
• Planning Limitations
Activity base mine planning can improve mine plans to make them more operational
oriented, detailed, feasible, and practical. Often short-range mine planning is merely a
form of tactical capacity planning. Mine planners design material excavation cuts to satisfy
budgeted production targets that were based on long-range mine plans. The planner has to
ensure that the material as outlined can be drilled, loaded, and hauled with the equipment

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22nd currently on hand at a mine. The resulting plans tend to offer general operational goals,
however, they don’t address specific operational considerations and details, consequently
production targets can be unrealistically high. Frequently mine operations fail to achieve
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Useful Planning Method

Seminar In practice, activity based project and process schedules serve very important functions
and have demonstrated their worth to managers and planners in a variety of applications.
Activity based planning can be used to simulate longer-range operations under assumed
conditions. Planners can project work activities into the future to examine the effects on
production targets, resource requirements, and potential conflicts. Planners can determine
the effects planned or unanticipated changes have on operations so that they can take
appropriate action if required. When schedules are projected into the future, conflicts
and bottlenecks with regards to resources can be discovered and addressed by altering
plans to address shortages. Planners can try various operational scenarios and resource
usage patterns and compare the resulting plans. Activity based scheduling can be used in
generating day-to-day schedules for guiding the operations of a firm. Planners can allocate
resources to different work activities to optimize productivity and resource utilization.
Activity schedules serve as the basis for planning external tasks such as preventative
maintenance, auxiliary support and service work, and material procurement. Activity
based plans and schedules serve as the starting point of communications and coordination
between planners and operators, and external suppliers. Activity based planning, when
used by mangers and planners who understand it strengths and limitations, can prove
to be a valuable planning and scheduling method that has the potential to improve the
quality of short-range mine planning as well.
Increases Planning Detail
Activity based mine planning improves short-range mine planning by increasing the
level of planning detail. Work is decomposed into discrete sequential activities that are
considered, explicitly stated, and then scheduled into context with allocated resources.
Detailed mining operations that are explicitly stated as tasks can be managed in the overall
scope of the mining project. Additionally, mine planners and supervisors can use them to
ensure that adequate or sufficient work is being done, unnecessary work is not done, and
the work that is done delivers the stated mining objective.
Increases Planning Realism
Activity based mine planning increases mine plan realism. Work tasks that mine
planners organize by predecessor-successor precedence and constrained by resource
availability dependencies coerce plans to be operationally feasible. Precedence
relationships cause work tasks to be sequenced in a technological or logical mining order—
material has to be drilled and shot before it can be mined. Resource availability constraints
force mine planners to consider resource availability, allocation, and conflicts—two work
activities can’t use the same equipment at the same time. Precedence relationships and
resource constraints combined enable mine planners to develop practical feasible plans
that can be achieved by mine operations.
Plan Optimization
Activity based mine planning improves plan quality as mine planners can optimize
mining schedules. Mine planners can compare schedules of various mining scenarios
projected into the future to determine which schedule achieves higher productivity and
resource utilization. Although resource constrained activity schedules do not have critical
paths in the traditional sense, mine planners can identify one or more critical sequences
of tasks that span the length of a schedule and that when shortened moves work activity
forward in time. A critical sequence of activities is represented by a series of slackless tasks
that are usually the result of a resource bottleneck—several tasks sequentially allocated to
the same piece of equipment. Mine planners can reassign tasks to alternate resources to
increase productivity.

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Plan Reconciliation
Activity based mine planning provides an opportunity for mine planners to reconcile
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mine plans with actual mine production results. Original mine activity schedules can
be compared with the actual work that was conducted in the mine for a specific time
period so that mine planning assumptions with respect to availabilities, utilizations,
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and productivity performance can be adjusted. Additionally, if work activity departures
are compared to the original schedule, mine planners can explore the reasons for the
deviations and eliminate the root causes whether they’re planning or operationally
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based. When directly considering deviations in task execution, reconciliation is easier and
speedier and more illuminating
Improves Communication and Collaboration
Activity based mine planning promotes better communication and collaboration
between mine planners and mining operations. Plans and schedules become the focus of
two-way communications between the two groups. At many mines, work is coordinated
informally in a process of making and keeping commitments. Where good communication
and collaboration is not established, mine planning and mining operations virtually form
two separate organizations, one for planning and one for getting work done. The two
organizations do not coordinate their work and they are characterized by different goals
and viewpoints. When mine operators contribute to the planning process in an interactive
fashion, mine plans are developed that are not only realistic but also relevant. Then the
mine planner can make requests of mine operations through plans and have reasonable
expectations that they will be followed because a commitment cycle has been established.
Demonstrates Plan Viability
In addition to fostering better communications and collaborations, activity base mine
planning is a method that helps mine planners promote a mine plan to operations because
it allows the planners to demonstrate the viability of a plan. An operationally oriented,
activity based mine plan, with sufficient detail, derived though the decomposition of work
that is feasible and practical, as a result of considering resource availability constraints
and precedence dependencies, can explicitly illustrate achievability of the work that it
represents. The plan will be much better received by mining operations personnel.
Mining Context
Short-range mine planning frequently fails to meet the expectations of mine operations
usually because mine plans contain overly aggressive production targets while lacking
operational detail. Specific mining scenarios and context are not adequately considered in
short-range mine planning, and when combined with a lack of operational oriented detail,
leads to production targets that are too high for mine operations to achieve. Broadly based
planning parameters can’t be applied directly in challenging mining situations such as
narrow mining widths, awkward geometries, tight ore supplies, extreme vertical mining
advance rates, new equipment deployments, and activities that conflict for space on a bench.
Auxiliary Support Activities
Mine planners are generally focused on the primary mining tasks and neglect to plan for
all key mining activities and their interactions, especially auxiliary activities that support
the main production efforts. Often the secondary activities conflict with mine production
due to competition for equipment, timing problems, and physical space limitations in the
mine. Dewatering, cable routing, drilling and blasting, access development, and various
cleanup activities can interfere with material loading and hauling. Occasionally mine
operations have to re-handle considerable tonnage as it mines though spilled and cast-
off material near pit bottoms. Significant amounts of equipment resources are consumed
mining material that mine operations were given credit for previously.
Maintenance Schedule
Short-range mine plans inadequately consider repetitive preventative maintenance
and can’t consider unscheduled maintenance because its occurrence can’t be forecasted.
Although preventative maintenance schedules are known and the loss of equipment

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22nd availability accounted for in production targets, the effects on other mining activities due
to the loss of resources and the resulting timing issues when projected into the future are
not well examined.
Annual Performance Indicators
Mine planners use broad statistical averages because they lack detailed reconciliation

Seminar data to adjust planning parameters. Production reporting systems provide performance
indicators that combine a range of equipment resources undertaking a number of tasks
because they are not designed to differentiate the mining activities that are similar but
vary subtlety. They are also biased toward the traditional view of process control in that
they are based on performance—the cybernetic model of process control and not process
deviation reporting. Consequently the mining process control and reconciliation fails to be
a method of learning and improvement because the root causes of mine plan discrepancies
are not identified.
Planning Limitations
Unfortunately all planning suffers from the inability of the planner to forecast all
required work and to anticipate all potential problems because not all work can be known
before hand. Planning for conditional activities in the event of problems is also difficult to
achieve in short-range mine planning. At some mines, plans can become obsolete shortly
after mine planners have completed them and the planning processes is too cumbersome
to keep the plans up-to-date with reality. Control of the operation then relies on informal
management because the planning process is too static.
Activity based planning conducted by reasonable planners who understand its strengths
and limitations can improve short-range mine planning. MineSight® Activity Planner is a
tool that can facilitate this process and be a benefit to mine planners who choose to use it.

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