Long-term mine production scheduling with multiple processing destinations under mineral supply uncertainty, based on multi-neighbourhood Tabu search

ABSTRACT

This paper presents a new mathematical formulation to address mine production scheduling with multiple processing streams, under mineral supply uncertainty, and where the destination is formulated as a variable for each block. The proposed mathematical model maximises discounted cash flows and penalises deviations from production targets. A parallel multi-neighbourhood Tabu search metaheuristic is developed to optimise the proposed model. An application at a gold deposit shows the practical aspects and computational efficiency of the model, as well as its ability to provide a schedule that meets production targets and provides a stable destination feed in term of tonnage.

KEYWORDS:

• Mine planning and production scheduling
• geological uncertainty
• technical risk management
• metaheuristics
• Tabu search
• stochastic optimisation

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Correction Statement

This article has been republished with minor changes. These changes do not impact the academic content of the article.

Additional information

Funding

This work was funded by the National Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada (NSERC) CDR [grant number 411270-10] and NSERC Discovery [grant number 239019]; the mining industry consortium members of McGill’s COSMO Stochastic Mine Planning Laboratory (AngloGold Ashanti, Barrick Gold, BHP, De Beers, IAMGOLD, Kinross Gold, Newmont Mining, and Vale); and the Canada Research Chairs Program.