Short-Term Linear Production scheduling for Mineral Reserves with Severe Geological Variability

The characteristics of fire clay soil mines are their High Geologic Variable Reserves. This article presents a model for scheduling such mines. The objective function is defined by minimizing costs. For the first time, constraints were added to the model to explore new minerals. Slope constraints were also defined by cost. To execute the model, one of the working face in the mine was considered. Standard scheduling model was used to evaluate the validity of the obtained results and the material layers were considered as hypothetical blocks. These models were solved for 8 time periods (weeks) by CPLEX software. The results showed that the assumed model was able to reduce costs by 4% compared to the standard model. Extract rate increased by 18.5% and transferring to stockpile by 17% compared to standard model. But the rate of material reclaiming from the stockpile was 90% lower than the standard model. The results of the sensitivity analysis of the parameters also showed that the extraction cost per ton of minerals is currently at a turning point in the graph. The cost of transporting each ton of minerals to the stockpiles has two minimum points, which is currently at the local minimum. Mining costs were not sensitive to the cost of reclaiming. Slope creating costs are not optimal in the second bench of the mine, and with a bit of optimization these costs can reduce overall mine costs. The costs of developing slopes in the third and fourth levels also follow a rational procedure, and as these costs increase, overall mine costs also increase.