In today’s economic climate it is becoming increasingly difficult to justify large capital mining projects. Strategic mine scheduling is key to maximizing the return on these investments. Minemax is an invaluable tool for strategic mine scheduling and increasing the return on our projects.
In the Barro Alto Project in Brazil, we have a big open pit mine and a complex metallurgical restriction for two plants. In this highly constrained scenario we were surprised with how fast Minemax’s Scheduling software came up with a result. We saw that Minemax’s scheduling results satisfied all our scheduling constraints.
We have used it for many ‘what if’ scenarios, things like increasing the fleet size, etc. We also find it very effective in its application to multi-process applications e.g., CIL, Dump Leach and Heap Leach, where cut-over grades are very important.
Minemax Scheduler has been invaluable in providing optimized strategic planning solutions in a timely manner. Diverse alternatives to mine development can be explored, ensuring practical and cost effective decisions are made.
We recently used Minemax Scheduler for life of mine scheduling of a complex coal deposit. It provided an optimised solution to multi-pit stripping and product blending problems in a very grade/quality variable deposit. The software makes development of varied scenarios easy to set up and it was very fast to generate solutions.
The newly added dumping modelling module allows easy incorporation of basic waste dumping scenarios into the NPV analysis and quickly replicated a hand generated schedule.
Since 2008, Minemax has become one of the key strategic and long-range mine planning software tools used both in new projects and operating mines. Implementation and use of Minemax software as a mine production scheduler enables mining engineers to:
With the right resources and skill sets, Minemax can be integrated seamlessly with the general mine planning packages, and it is extremely easy to use when the scheduling requirements and models are correctly developed. Minemax have provided excellent support in building scheduling models and have never ignored the user enhancement requests.
When I think of the thousands of hours of plan iterations we and those before us have done at YA over the years, I can’t help but feel staggered by what Minemax can produce quickly if the model is well set-up!
Minemax’s optimized scheduling has given direction to our LOM plan, based on its ability to provide value driven decisions for multi pit and multi element blending.
Site and corporate management have been impressed with the tool. Every time people want to see a what-if scenario, they ask “Can we run that through Minemax?” And they ask that a lot!
Minemax has provided us with excellent initial and ongoing support insuring practical and long term use of their software. Once set up with very little work many iterations could be run to explore the best business case and identify manageable bottlenecks.
You can read all about our mine planning software, as well as our mining software training and consulting services, right here on our website. But if you have any questions, we’re here to help.