An Integer Mathematical Programming Model for Production Scheduling Problem in Open-Pit Mines under Grade Uncertainty and Solving Using the Firefly Algorithm

Long-term production scheduling in open-pit mines is a crucial issue in mining planning and determines the distribution of cash flow throughout the life of the mine. The purpose of the planning is to maximize the net present value by taking into account all operational constraints such as slope, mixing of different grades, mineral production, and extraction capacity. The uncertainties associated with model data play an important role in optimizing long-term production plans. Among the uncertainties, grade uncertainty plays a major role. In this paper, hybrid models are presented by the Lagrangian relaxation (LR) method, augmented Lagrangian relaxation (ALR) method, and firefly algorithm (FA) to solve the long-term production scheduling problem of open-pit mines with the assumption of deterministic and also considering the grade uncertainty. The firefly algorithm is used to update the Lagrange multipliers. The newly proposed approaches are based on optimizing Lagrangian multipliers and comparing them with the results of combined Lagrangian relaxation method and augmented Lagrangian relaxation with the Genetic Algorithm (GA), and the traditional sub-gradient (SG) method. For solving and validating the obtained model, Chadarmelo iron ore mine is considered as a suitable case study. The results of the case study show that the combined strategy (ALR-FA) can provide a near-optimal solution over other methods such that, over a given period, the net present value using the proposed hybrid approach is 20.11% higher than the traditional method is available. Also, the CPU speed of the proposed model is 4.7% more than the other methods.