Mine Planner Update: Open Cut Mine Planning Challenges

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Mine Planner Update: Open Cut Mine Planning Challenges

Effective open cut mine planning can be challenging in today’s environment of increased demand for productivity, competition, commodity price fluctuations, rapid growth in overseas markets, equipment scarcity, government red tape and the critical shortage of skills in the mining industry. 

What challenges do mine planners face in the current environment?

Given the integral role mine planning plays in early risk mitigation, mine planners from leading organisations are focused on honing their current plans and strategies for improved accuracy, efficiency and ore recovery. 

Mine planners know that the profitable exploitation of a mineral deposit requires considerable evaluation and planning. 

Upfront, it must be determined what portion of the deposit is economical to mine (the mineable reserve) and what mining method is appropriate for this purpose. Once this has been determined,  effort must be made to plan and schedule the extraction of the mineable reserve. 

For Mine planners, this process requires planning around the mining sequence, rate, design, and equipment requirements, and so on. 

Of course, the overall objective of this process is to determine the most profitable extraction plan and highest rate of return on the money invested. 

These tasks are performed under the realm of long term planning (LTP). 

Challenges for Mine Planners in this whole process include (but are not limited to): working with estimated rather than exact data, looking years instead of days into the future, and dealing with evolving economic criteria.

The uncertain nature of mineral evaluation data requires that LTP tasks be done over and over again. This means mine planners must regularly re-evaluate sensitivities, redefine key assumptions, and incorporate new data. The complexity of this role balanced with the uncertainties outlined make the requirement for better planning and strategy creation paramount. 

With these challenges and the complexity of the roll in mine, Mining IQ has organised Open Cut Mine Planning 2012 on the 18-19 September in Perth. This is the only focused forum in Australia that will provide industry professionals with insights into innovative methods for effective scheduling to meet production targets, forecasting economical risks, aligning short term and long term plans and streamlining data systems for cost effective, timely and improved operational efficiency. 

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