| Easy-to-use Interface |
- The Navigation Bar on the main window allows you to easily switch views at the click of a button as you set up your model. After importing block model data, perform a quick tonnage and grade reconciliation on a model, pit or bench level with the summary tonnage chart and grades table. Then, switch to the production view to set tonnage and grade targets with the spreadsheet-style tabular interface. After setting up the financial information and optionally defining intermediate stockpiles, you are ready to press the auto-schedule button to automatically generate a schedule.
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| Simple Mine Definition Wizard |
- When you import your model data, you have the option of grouping together blocks with similar grades to retain parcel information and avoid grade smoothing. This is particularly helpful when you have set up stockpiles and want to retain selectivity with respect to block destination (mill or stockpile).
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| Retain Parcel Information |
- When you import your model data, you have the option of grouping together blocks with similar grades to retain parcel information and avoid grade smoothing. This is particularly helpful when you have set up stockpiles and want to retain selectivity with respect to block destination (mill or stockpile).
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| Optionally Reblock Data |
- When importing, you may choose to geometrically reblock your data into larger mining panels. This is helpful when you do not have stages or pushbacks defined and wish to develop a staging strategy in the context of scheduling. You can set the panel size in the X, Y and Z directions. Geometric reblocking also helps address minimum mining width issues that haven't been considered in a staging analysis.
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| Import Gridded Seam Data |
- Minemax Scheduler now handles gridded seam models. A gridded seam model is a grid (normally regular) in the X-Y direction with a stack of cells at each X,Y coordinate. Cell heights (Z dimension) can vary throughout the model. Seam data is imported into Minemax Scheduler with grade information and seam identifiers, and in the summary view you can view information by seam instead of by bench. In addition, the 3D Viewer will colour-code the blocks by seam. Gridded seam approaches are common in modeling coal, bauxite or lateritic deposits where the zones of interest approximate horizontal layers.
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| Interfaces with General Mining Packages |
- All general mining packages will export column based ascii data for their block models. Some packages have tools for exporting this data directly in Minemax Scheduler format. For those that do not, it is quite simple to use Minemax Scheduler's scripting language (TCL) to reformat the data.
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| Incrementally Import Block Model |
- After generating a schedule, it is sometimes desirable to import more data to extend the schedule. This is straightforward with Minemax Scheduler due to its ability to focus on specific time ranges according to your direction. You simply import the new data and continue scheduling from where your current schedule finishes off.
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| Material Movement Constraints |
- To have smooth equipment utilization, or to ramp up production on a new project or expansion you can use the material movement constraints. This lets you constrain the minimum and/or maximum total material movement for any time period. If you wish to be more specific and drop down to the level of material movement from individual pits, it is simply a matter of typing in minimum and/or maximum movements for individual pits in given time periods. This enables you to force mining from certain pits at certain times or to prevent mining in certain areas. Although this may not be optimal from a purely financial point of view, it gives you the control to represent issues which may not be entirely financially quantifiable.
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| Processing Constraints |
- Processing constraints allow you to model capacity constraints of processing nodes in your material flow. In the simple case this would be a milling process, but can be more complex to control down-stream processes such as metal refining, beneficiation, and final product shipment (e.g. rail or truck).
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| Series and Parallel Material Flow |
- Any number of processing constraints can be applied. For each process defined, when you go through the mine configuration wizard, you have the option of controlling the minimum and maximum amount of that process in any time period. If all of your processes are in series, then all material will flow through all processes. However, your mine may be configured such that a certain process (e.g. beneficiation) is an optional route. This can easily be modeled and controlled as a parallel process.
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| Blending Constraints |
- Blending constraints have been at the core of Minemax Scheduler since its inception. Blending can be in terms of ore type, grades or anything else you wish to model as an attribute. You can specify upper and lower bounds on any attribute or ratio of attributes, and have any number of blending constraints active. Unlike some other scheduling packages, Minemax Scheduler can treat blending constraints as hard constraints instead of just as preferences.
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| Pit Precedences with Bench Lag |
- Pit precedences are set at the click of a button. You can specify that a pit cannot be mined until all of another pit has been mined out. Alternatively, if your pits represent a series of stages within a larger pit you can say that a pit is preceded by another pit by a certain minimum and/or maximum bench lag.
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| Maximum Number of Active Pits |
- If you have a relatively large number of mining areas and wish to reduce the movement of equipment across these areas, you can use the Maximum Number of Active Pits constraint. For example, some of the lateritic deposits may have 30, 40 or many more possible mining areas which are all relatively small. With the Maximum Number of Active Pits constraint, you could restrict mining to at most 6 areas in each time period. This constraint leads to schedules that are optimal in the context of practicality.
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| Seam Precedence Constraints |
- With a gridded seam model, you can control mining by specifying the distance an upper seam must advance before mining begins at a lower seam. This seam precedence constraint is applied on a block by block basis for advance in the east-west and/or north-south directions.
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| Maximum Bench Turnover |
- To produce practical schedules, the maximum bench turnover constraint can be used to constrain the vertical advance per pit per time period.
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| Block Dependent Mining and Processing Costs |
- In the financial model, if you have the information available, you can specify block dependent mining and processing costs. The variability in mining cost may be due to the location of the block (deeper in the pit or further from the crusher is more expensive) whereas often the processing cost depends on the grade of the block. Mining and processing cost are actually introduced as attributes in the model to accurately model them on a block by block basis.
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| 3D Visualization of pit development over time |
- Minemax Scheduler uses industry standard OpenGL visualization technology to let you interact with your model visually to ensure that mining will progress in a practical manner. There is no need to export the schedule back into your general mining package to verify its practicality. With the 3D Viewer you can immediately step through the development and visualize the mining sequence.
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| Detailed Material Movement Report |
- The material movement report reports on tonnes and grade for all defined products from Pit to Processing, Pit to Stockpile and Stockpile to Processing. It also gives totals From Pit and To Processing. You can customize the report to only list the pairs of material source and destination that you are interested in. You also get a breakdown of tonnes and grade on a pit by pit basis.
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| Financial Report |
- The financial report gives a breakdown of revenues and costs per time period. There are revenue items corresponding to each metal producing attribute, and cost items for mining, processing, stockpiling and reclaiming. A profit per time period is given that may be used to calculate net present value. All reports are exportable as html or csv.
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| Bench Turnover Report |
- The bench turnover report shows the tonnes of each product mined in each time period on a bench by bench basis for all pits. You can customize this report by choosing the products on which you wish to report.
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| Tonnage and Grade Charts by Product |
- Bar charts show tonnage or grade per time period for selected products and attributes. These charts can show amounts for the entire model or for a selected pit. All charts can be copied to the clipboard for subsequent inclusion in a word-processing document or spreadsheet.
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| Stack-bar Chart Showing Movements by Pit |
- The pit movements chart displays total material moved from each pit as a colour-coded stacked bar chart.
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| Stockpile Progression Chart |
- If you have defined intermediate stockpiles, you can view activity on the stockpile as a cumulative graph showing total material on the stockpile over time. Stockpile increments and cumulative composition can also be saved as a csv file.
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| Charts and Reports Easily Export to Word-processing and Spreadsheet Applications |
- Reports can be saved as csv or html format for easy import into a spreadsheet application such as Excel. With the html option, the colour coding and shading of the report is preserved and viewable in Excel.
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| Scripting Language for Custom Reporting |
- Minemax Scheduler has a TCL scripting interpreter built in that allows custom reporting and interfacing with other applications. Since the TCL scripting interpreter has access to the internal data structures of Minemax Scheduler, the possibilities are endless for customized reporting and interfacing.
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