Production Scheduling of Open Pit Mine Using Sequential Branch-and-Cut and Longest Path Algorithm: An Application from an African Copper Mine

Open pit mine production scheduling assigns mining blocks in different production periods for maximising profits after satisfying geotechnical and operational constraints. In this paper, two Open pit mine production scheduling models were applied in an African copper deposit. The first model is a traditional model with more tight resource constraints; the second model is a more robust model where resource constraints are relaxed by penalizing the objective function. Both the models were solved using two step algorithms: (a) year wise production scheduling using a sequential branch-and-cut algorithm; and (b) an iterative longest path algorithm to improve the solution generated from branch-and-cut. Results demonstrated that due to the tight constraints in Model 1, the optimizer was unable to generate a feasible solution after the first period, therefore the lower limit metal production constraint was eliminated to generate a feasible solution; however, Model 2 was able to generate a feasible solution for all periods. Results show that both the models generated nearly the same amount of ore, waste, metal content, and mine life. Model 2 generates relatively more net present value as compared to Model 1, whereas, the computational time required for solving the scheduling problem is relatively less for Model 1 than for Model 2.