By Carl Brackpool, Product Manager
Sequencing and modeling waste dumps with multiple access roads is a challenge facing surface mines around the world. For users of Hexagon Mining’s mine scheduling software, MineSight Schedule Optimizer, (MSSO) the workaround has been to split the dump destination into multiple dumps. If a waste dump (e.g. Dump1) has two entrances, then the user splits it into two dumps – one for each road. Unfortunately, this creates more destinations than needed in the schedule. Until now!
Version 11 of MSSO responds to customers’ haulage needs for open pit truck and shovel operations with a Multi-Entry feature.
Engineers need the ability to sequence sub-zones from both ramps without being locked into specifying which ramp will fill a specific sub-zone. Both scenarios use manual calculation methods, which incur time and cost. Also limited is the flexibility of quickly running multiple scenarios and applying those schedules and plans to operations as the mine progresses.
Version 11’s Multi-Entry feature addresses these challenges. For example, mine engineers can now plan for haulage access to dumps via multiple entrances or ramps based on the mining location and available dumping points. If you are trying to determine the best routing destination for your material while accounting for sequencing destinations with multiple entries, then MSSO Version 11 is the answer.
Mines understand low confidence in sequencing directly affects time and cost. MSSO now improves the haulage component significantly. The improvement not only addresses concerns with highly manual calculations, but it also represents the first in a series of features around a world-class haulage function that will include monitoring for road congestion in real-time – the next phase of MSSO and Multi-Entry for 2018.
Upgrading to Multi-Entry is an easy migration to implement and install around a user interface. Navigation is in keeping with a mine engineer’s workflow. The setup is similar to our MineSight Haulage tool and, as in the past, customers establish a “node” for a specific location, regardless of whether it has one ramp or multiple ramps for ingress and exit. Long-term and short-term schedulers build the additional lift and ramp center-lines from the primary haul road (or roads) leading to the destination.
We’ve made importing from existing haulage plans, including lift geometries and ramps, simple with a few clicks. Removed are the limitations for mapping multiple dumps, stock piles, and crush leach dumps. Multi-Entry will simplify the setup for projects while producing a more detailed dumping sequence in the schedule.
Reporting views remain clean and easy-to-understand. However, there are additional fields and name-editing for destinations, and for calculating and then comparing cycle and travel times to determine operating costs for individual entries.
Marrying the customer dynamic data set, lift and ramp geometries, with the calculation engine, and the most important piece, a realistic visualization, is where MineSight products excel. Streamlining the workflow with more confidence is achieved with MSSO’s proven optimization algorithm and natively extended to Multi-Entry. MSSO Version 11 is one more step on a path to complete packaged solutions, which help customers achieve a more profitable mining operation.