Abstract
The mining industry reports hundreds of billions of dollars in revenue every year. Most of this value is forecasted ahead of time and reported in the life of mine plans, 5-year budget plans, and 2-year budget plans. Mine planners evaluate and update several mine plans on a regular basis. Traditionally, long, medium and short-range plans have been prepared in bits and pieces by multiple departments, teams and software. This technical paper presents a wholeness approach to open pit scheduling and optimization. In this approach the life of mine plan, the 5-year budget and the 2-year budget plans are integrated as one optimized feasible mine schedule. Similarly, in this wholeness approach the extraction plan, the haul plan and the dump plan are integrated and solved as one problem across multiple planning horizons. Lastly, this presentation will review the tactical and strategic considerations associated with solving complex scheduling and optimization problems with a multi-mine case stuy.