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Schedule Optimization Tool ready for release
One of the most important and time consuming stages in designing and operating a mine is the scheduling process.
Illustrated here is the difference between SOT planning and manual planning, higher NPV’s are produced in less time with SOT
It determines how efficiently and profitably an ore body will be mined. MIRARCO’s research on developing the next generation of mine design software has resulted in a genetic algorithm based software that produces near-optimal mine schedules with increased net present values.
Determining a feasible underground mine schedule is no small task, the sheer number of variables and possibilities make for a complex problem that traditional optimisation algorithms cannot solve.
The Schedule Optimization Tool (SOT) is designed to automate part of this process. The software takes mine activities - drilling, blasting, loading, supporting and backfilling - into account as well as available resources such as people, machines and processing capacity.
Users can also enter information about the overall financial scenario to find a resilient schedule and quickly adapt to market changes. Based on these parameters, SOT produces hundreds of valid schedules in a fraction of the time needed by traditional methods.
To take schedules from the feasible to near optimal level, an artificial intelligence tool - the genetic algorithm - is employed. When a set of schedules are generated, the algorithm seeks out the best qualities of individual schedules and combines them to generate a new set of results, by repeating this process the results ‘evolve’ into schedules with higher and higher net present values.
Research tools have little value if they are not applied to industry operations. It’s for this reason MIRARCO has partnered with GijimaAst for the commercialisation of SOT and designed the software to be compatible with GijimaAst’s Enhanced Production Scheduler (EPS). According to Adam White of GijimaAst, EPS is the most widely used scheduling tool in Australia’s underground hard rock mines with 170 licenses actively in use for completing both long term and short term production schedules.
EPS provides the mine planner with the capability of scheduling using a Gantt chart, the flexibility of spreadsheet editing for short term planning, tabular and histogram reporting, all integrated with a dynamic graphics engine that allows the user to animate and see the effects of changes to their project.
SOT complements the existing EPS functionality by introducing schedule optimization.
A mine plan can be built in EPS and a general sequence of activities created to indicate the practical sequence of extraction that must be obeyed, for example the access development must be complete before a stope can commence. By leaving the schedule as unconstrained as possible, yet practically achievable, the optimization engine will be able to analyse the greatest number of alternative schedules and search for the optimum result.
The Schedule Optimization Tool‘s capabilities are being further expanded within a major AMIRA-led project (Planning and Rapid Integrated Mine Optimization, PRIMO). Enhancements will at first only be available to PRIMO sponsors before being made available to the rest of the community.
SOT is in its final stages of commercial development with the first client release scheduled for March 2009.
For more information about SOT, contact MIRARCO’s Martin Smith (msmith@mirarco.org) or GijimaAst’s Adam White (adamw@gijimamining.com)
