Medium-Term Production Scheduling of the Lumwana Mining Complex

Martin L. Smith () and Stewart J. Wicks ()
Additional contact information
Martin L. Smith: MineSmith Pty., Ltd., Kenmore, Queensland 4069, Australia
Stewart J. Wicks: MineSmith Pty., Ltd., Kenmore, Queensland 4069, Australia

Interfaces, 2014, vol. 44, issue 2, 176-194

Abstract: In this paper, we discuss our development of a life-of-mine production plan for Barrick Gold Corporation’s Lumwana operation, a large copper mining complex based on the Chimiwungo and Malundwe reserves. In our production plan, we maximize recovered copper metal based on a mixed-integer program (MIP) formulation with reserve aggregations that approximate those used in operational mine planning. We discuss the application of a MIP to medium-term planning based on a 60-month production schedule. Constraints on shovel placement, uranium levels in mill feed, stockpiling and mining, and processing capacity ensure that the resulting production schedules and resource allocation are operationally feasible. At Lumwana, our MIP solution strategies optimize the scheduling problem at two levels of time and production-volume granularity. A coarse solution based on annual production from aggregated reserve blocks sets the overall production strategy. This strategy is then imposed on a schedule of monthly production for the scheduling volumes used in actual production planning. This problem was not solvable as a single multiperiod monolith. Instead, we solved a sequence of overlapping multiperiod problems in which each subproblem advances the schedule horizon a given number of periods while fixing the solution to the initial periods of the previous subproblem. We solve multiple options relating to production capacity with a life-of-business optimization system (LOBOS) that we developed.

Keywords: strategic planning; OR; natural resources; open pit mining; surface mining; optimization; integer programming; applications (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2014
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (4)

Downloads: (external link)
http://dx.doi.org/10.1287/inte.2014.0737 (application/pdf)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:inm:orinte:v:44:y:2014:i:2:p:176-194

Access Statistics for this article

More articles in Interfaces from INFORMS Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Chris Asher ().