A comparison of open pit design and scheduling techniques

Author

Terry Alan Bush

Abstract

"Two of the most frequent applications of operations research in open pit mining are those for definition of final pit limits and production schedules. While numerous packages are available for the ultimate pit limit definition, only two competing packages are available for production scheduling: Whittle Programming’s Four-X and the Earthworks Corporation’s NPVScheduler.

Using a statistically designed experiment, a series of ultimate and optimal pits were generated for a selected deposit using each of the evaluated packages with the optimization criterion in the evaluations being both the cash flow and the net present value. Benchmarking NPVScheduler against the industry standard Whittle Four-X, the resultant optimal and ultimate pit shells were evaluated and compared for accuracy, optimality and technical practicality.

The ultimate pits generated by both software packages were essentially the same in value, size and shape. Through the process of “high grading,” the optimal pits generated by NPVScheduler tended to be smaller in size but similar in value to those generated by Whittle Four-X"-- Abstract, p. iii

Advisor(s)

Golosinski, Tad S.

Committee Member(s)

Wilson, John W.
Kohser, Ronald A.

Department(s)

Mining Engineering

Degree Name

M.S. in Mining Engineering

Comments

Accompanying CD-ROM, available at Missouri S&T Library, contains a number of tables and figures referred to in the text.

Publisher

University of Missouri--Rolla

Publication Date

Spring 1999

Pagination

xvii, 97 pages, CD-ROM

Note about bibliography

Includes bibliographical references (pages 92-96)

Rights

© 1999 Terrey Alan Bush, All rights reserved.

Document Type

Thesis - Restricted Access

File Type

text

Language

English

Thesis Number

T 7579

Print OCLC #

41625721

Recommended Citation

Bush, Terry Alan, "A comparison of open pit design and scheduling techniques" (1999). Masters Theses. 4398.
https://scholarsmine.mst.edu/masters_theses/4398