Direct stockpile scheduling: Mathematical formulation

Abstract

In a mining context, production scheduling’s main objective is to determine the best mining sequence of blocks to achieve the largest net present value and to maximize ore reserve exploitation. Stockpiling and blending procedures may represent very helpful alternatives for mine planning to ensure the ore quality and amount required by the processing plant. In order to satisfy industrial requirements of grades and tones, reducing stockpile fluctuations may represent a very important tool especially for medium and short term mine planning. Classical linear programing has been widely used to model blending problems at the mining industry, however this formulation allows only one objective formulation. The current work describes a system based on goal programing able to reach blending constraints desired by short/medium term planning. The proposed formulation achieves the best schedule scenario, ensuring cost constrains are respected. Hence, this study aims to provide support for both short and long term mine planning.